Several studies discovered that PURα can act as a transcription activator or transcription repressor to regulate PCK2, Snail2, SRCIN1, and RASAL1 mRNA expressions in ESCC cells directly, thus promoting metastasis (Gao et al. 2021; Xu et al. 2023; Sun et al. 2020). Here, SNAI2 is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.