Abstract: Esophageal cancer is one of malignant tumors which threaten human health. Although surgery combined with radiotherapy and chemotherapy has made progress in recent years, its morbidity and mortality are still high in China. The tumor targeted drugs in signal transduction pathway make conspicuous achievements in the treatment for lung cancer, breast cancer and prostatic cancer,etc. Therefore, investigating the signaling pathway related with esophageal carcinogenesis will benefit both chemotherapy and chemoprevention. This article will provide new signal pathway progress and target proteins by summarizing the findings on the activation of signal transduction pathway in esophageal cancer.