In esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, overexpressed BHLHE40 was found to be correlated with better survival and in vitro experiments demonstrated that overexpression of BHLHE40 induced cellular senescence and suppressed cell growth and colony formation in the esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell line EC9706 [265]. This evidence concerns the gene BHLHE40 and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.