We then searched for target genes that are clinically relevant (i.e. highly expressing in ESCC tumor tissues and positively correlated with poor prognosis of ESCC patients) as LINC00680, which led to the discovery of one gene named PAK6 (Fig. 3g-i and Additional file 6: Table S5). This evidence concerns the gene LINC00680 and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.