Objective  This study focuses on ATP citrate lyase (ACLY), takes esophageal cancer cells and online databases as the main research subjects, and further explores the expression of ACLY in esophageal cancer cells and its effects on cell growth and proliferation through bioinformatics analysis and cell biology experiments, in order to provide a new target for clinical diagnosis and treatment of esophageal cancer.

Method  The databases such as TCGA were used to analyze the expression of ACLY in esophageal cancer patients, as well as the expression of ACLY in esophageal cancer patients of different race groups and different clinical stages of esophageal cancer. At the same time, the effects of ACLY changes on the proliferation and cell cycle of esophageal cancer cells were detected by basic cell experiments such as CCK-8 method, EdU staining experiment, plate cloning experiment and flow cytometry.

Results  ACLY is highly expressed in various tumor tissues including esophageal cancer. The expression of ACLY is universal, independent of race and gender, and its expression is related to the staging of esophageal cancer and lymph node metastasis. Further experiments in cell biology confirmed that knocking down ACLY could inhibit the proliferation of esophageal cancer cells and block the cell cycle. Overexpression of ACLY could increase the proliferative capacity of esophageal cancer cells and promote cell cycle progression.

Conclusion  ACLY can affect the proliferation ability of esophageal cancer cells, and ACLY may be a potential target for the treatment and prognosis of esophageal cancer.

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