BACKGROUND: The objective of the current study was to investigate the clinical activity of, safety of, and predictive biomarkers for afatinib, an irreversible pan-ErbB kinase inhibitor, in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (R/M-ESCC). METHODS: Patients with R/M-ESCC that was refractory to platinum-based chemotherapy were enrolled in the current multicenter, single-arm, phase 2 study and received afatinib at a dose of 40 mg/day. The primary endpoint was the objective response rate. Secondary endpoints included progression-free survival, overall survival, the disease control rate, and the safety profile. To identify predictive biomarkers, single-nucleotide variations, short insertions/deletions, and somatic copy number alterations were assessed using whole-exome sequencing and their associations with clinical outcomes were analyzed. RESULTS: Among 49 enrolled patients, the objective response rate and disease control rate were 14.3% and 73.3%, respectively. With a median follow-up of 6.6 months, the median progression-free survival and overall survival were 3.4 months and 6.3 months, respectively. Treatment-related adverse events were noted to have occurred in 33 patients (67.3%), with the majority being of grade 1 to 2 (adverse events were graded and recorded based on the National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events [version 4.03]). Whole-exome sequencing demonstrated that the ESCC genomes of patients who demonstrated a response to afatinib were enriched with genomic alterations of TP53 and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). As a predictive marker, a score derived from TP53 disruptive mutations and EGFR amplifications and/ or missense mutations demonstrated a significant association with the response to afatinib. The score based on the mutational status of EGFR and TP53 achieved a performance of an area under the curve of 0.86 in predicting the sensitivity of afatinib. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the current study demonstrated that afatinib can confer modest clinical benefits with manageable toxicity in patients with platinum-resistant R/M-ESCC. Identification of TP53 alterations and EGFR amplifications may serve as predictive markers with which to identify patients with R/M-ESCC who may benefit from afatinib. Cancer 2020;126:4521-4531.