RNA-Seq analysis of human cell lines established from normal and neoplastic esophageal squamous epithelium

Esophageal cancer (EC) is the eighth most common cancer globally in 2012 and predominantly occurs in the man (Enzinger and Mayer, 2003; Conteduca et al., 2012). EC is classified mainly into two types, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and esophageal adenocarcinoma, accounting for 60–70% and 20–30% of all EC cases, respectively. In a previous statistical study it was reported that the numbers of new EC cases and EC-related deaths worldwide in 2008 were estimated to be 482,300 and 406,800, respectively (Jemal et al., 2011). This high mortality rate is largely due to the characteristics of EC such as frequent distant/local metastasis and poor subjective symptoms leading to difficulty with early diagnosis. Patients affected with EC diagnosed at late stages mostly have unsatisfactory prognosis, even though various therapeutic options are available. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop effective methods that enable the early detection of EC (Orringer, 1993), prompting us to search for novel biomarkers for EC. Here, we provide datasets from RNA-Seq analysis of Het-1A, a normal human esophageal squamous cell line (Stoner et al., 1991), and TE-1, TE-5, and TE-8, which are well-, poorly-, and moderately-differentiated ESCC-derived cell lines, respectively (Nishihira et al., 1993). The raw data of these experiments have been deposited at DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) under the accession IDs DRR084199, DRR084200, DRR084201, and DRR084202.