Cancer of esophagus was first recorded in China over 2000 years ago using the name "Ye Ge," which means "hard of swallowing with blockage of the gullet and vomiting after eating" or "Dysphagia and Belching." It is also termed "Yi Guan" in many Traditional Chinese Medicine textbooks and is commonly seen in the elderly and rarely develops in young people. Esophageal cancer (EC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world. It ranks among 10 most frequently occurring cancers in the world. Apparently four lakh new cases of this cancer occur each year. The high incidence rates are found in China, Japan, Africa, and Iran. EC is the second most common cancer in men and fifth most common cause of cancer in females in India. The epidemiological studies have clearly established very high incidence of the EC in India particularly from Kashmir region.

Medicinal plants are being used in traditional treatments to cure variety of diseases from thousands of years. Screening of antimicrobial and antioxidant activities performed on Elsholtzia densa crude extracts which is traditionally used as herb shows that they are endowed with potentially utilizable antimicrobial and free radical scavenging activity. Accordingly, this implies the inhibition of microbial pathogenesis and cellular oxidation that is linked to pathological incidents such as heart disease, aging and cancer. It was seen that the ethylacetate extract showed the maximum inhibitory effects against both bacterial and fungal growth. This may be due to the presence of such ingredients in the said extracts like flavonoids, terpenes, tannins, polyphenolic compounds, alkaloids, etc. The crude extracts of the plant possess radical scavenging activity as estimated by in vitro antioxidant assays like DNA damage assay, lipid peroxidation assay, DPPH assay, FTC assay, etc. Hence, Elsholtzia densa extracts could be used as an easy accessible source of natural antioxidants and antimicrobial agent.