At present, the development of chemotherapy for esophageal cancer is slow, and there are no clear conclusions and standard programs in the fields of palliative chemotherapy, neoadjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy. The main reasons are: most of the western developed countries have esophageal adenocarcinoma, and the conclusions drawn from their clinical studies are difficult to be applied to the treatment of esophageal squamous cancer, which is mostly a minority of patients; although China is a country with high incidence of esophageal squamous cancer, there is a lack of rigorous prospective randomized controlled clinical trials. Comparing with other tumors, such as breast cancer and lung cancer, the research development of chemotherapy and molecular targeted drugs is very rapid, and the current research hotspots have been focused on three aspects: from the approximate pathological typing to the development of specific pathological typing, e.g., lung cancer used to be divided into small-cell lung cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer only, but now the chemotherapy has to take into account the adenocarcinoma, large-cell carcinoma or squamous carcinoma; from the phenotype to the development of the genotype, and from the phenotype to the development of the genotype. From phenotype to genotype, such as the application of gefitinib in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer, only the expression of EGFR is considered in the past, but now it is necessary to consider whether there are mutations in the 19, 20, 21 loci of EGFR; from the expression of genes to the expression of how much, such as the application of Herceptin in the treatment of breast cancer, not only the expression of CerBb-2 is considered, but also the overexpression of CerBb-2 is also taken into account. Translational research in molecular biology greatly promotes the development of tumor therapy and provides the possibility for the realization of individualized tumor therapy. Some of our doctors think that chemotherapy for esophageal cancer has poor efficacy and has no research prospect. In fact, the median survival of advanced lung cancer at the end of the last century was only 8 months, which was also poor, and after 20 years of research, its median survival has been extended to 1 year, and now, combining with molecular typing for selecting patients for treatment, the median survival can be up to 2 years, and esophageal cancer has the same very good research prospect. At present, the development of tumor drug therapy is very clear, we, as a country with high incidence of esophageal squamous carcinoma, can’t just sit back and wait for the research progress of developed countries, and we can’t copy the research results of other countries due to the genetic differences between different races, we should carry out our own clinical trials, and in the process, we should pay attention to translational research in molecular biology, search for molecular markers related to the treatment of esophageal squamous carcinoma and make due efforts in the world’s It is imperative and urgent for us to take up the cause of finding molecular markers related to the treatment of esophageal squamous carcinoma, and to gain a due position in the academic field of esophageal cancer in the world.