IRGM and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: These results demonstrated that TAOK3 could be viewed as an oncogene and prognostic biomarker in ESCC, similar to other cancers.[16, 34, 35] The correlation analysis showed the expression level of protein IRGM was positively correlated with protein TAOK3, which indicated that the expression of IRGM was regulated by TAOK3 in ESCC tissues.