Abstract: ABSTRACT　AIM: The thymosin originally isolated from calf thymus, recently, it has been demonstrated overexpression in various neoplastic tissues. This study was to investigate the clinicopathologic significance of the expressions of thymosinβ10 in human esophageal carcinoma. METHODS: Immunohistochemical（IHC）staining was used to detect the expression of thymosinβ10 in 70 cases of esophageal carcinoma and 30 cases of para-cancerous normal esophageal mucosa, the results in combination with common clinicopathological parameters were statisticly analyzed. RESULTS: Thymosinβ10 expressed in the cytoplasm. The positive expression rate of thymosinβ10 in esophageal carcinoma 75.71%（53/70） was much higher than that in para-cancerous normal esophageal mucosa 23.33%(7/30) (P<0.01). The positive expression rate of thymosinβ10 in well differential esophageal carcinoma was much lower than that in moderate or poor carcinoma, the positive expression rate of thymosinβ10 in esophageal carcinom of mucosa or submucosa was much lower than that in muscularis propria carcinoma，the positive expression rate of thymosinβ10 in esophageal carcinom of negative lymph node metastasis was much lower than that in positive lymph node metastasis (allP<0.05). Thymosinβ10 expression had no relation with sex, age, site and size（P>0.05）. CONCLUSION: Thymosinβ10 was highly expressed in esophageal carcinoma, it was correlated with the differentiation, invasion and metastasis of esophageal carcinoma, it might be a new tumor marker for diagnosing of the human esophageal carcinoma.

Key words: Esophageal carcinoma, Thymosinβ10