To better determine the mechanisms of DEGs in ESCC, GSEA (Supplementary Table S3) was carried out and the results showed that the DEGs mainly affected “pathways in cancer,” “cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction,” “natural killer cell mediated cytotoxicity,” “autoimmune thyroid disease” and other pathways (Figure 4C), and other related functions such as “TNFA signaling via NFKB,” “P53 pathway,” “inflammatory response” (Figure 4D). Here, TNF is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.