Therefore, we conducted a comprehensive survey of the potential mechanism of CST1 in ESCC development by performing the transcriptome sequencing of ESCC cells with CST1 knockdown, and surprisingly discovered that the differential genes were closely related to the regulation of cell metabolic processes and mitochondrial respiratory chain-related oxidoreductase activity, and were significantly enriched in metabolic and tumor-related signaling pathways, suggesting that CST1 might be involved in mediating mitochondrial OXPHOS in ESCC cells. Here, CST1 is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.