摘要Esophageal adenocarcinoma is a major cause of cancer death in men in the developed world. Continuing poor outcomes with conventional therapies that predomi-nantly target apoptosis pathways have lead to increas-ing interest in treatments that target the cell cycle. A large international effort has led to the development of a large number of inhibitors, which target cell cycle kinases, including cyclin-dependent kinases, Aurora ki-nases and polo-like kinase. Initial phaseⅠ/Ⅱtrials in solid tumors have often demonstrated only modest clinical benefits of monotherapy. This may relate in part to a failure to identify the patient populations that will gain the most clinical benefit. Newer compounds lacking the side effect profile of first-generation compounds may show utility as adjunctive treatments targeted to an in-dividual's predicted response to treatment.