ArticleCancers2021
PD-L1 Testing and Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck: A Multicenter Study on the Diagnostic Reproducibility of Different Protocols.
Article in Cancers, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- PD-L1 in oral squamous cell carcinoma: A key biomarker from the laboratory to the bedside.Clinical and experimental dental research · 2022Pooled it
- Driving progress in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer: the NRG Oncology perspective.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2026Review
- Article
- Deciphering site-specific histopathological parameters with potential clinical value in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas.Oncology letters · 2025Article
- Salivary biomarkers: a promising approach for predicting immunotherapy response in head and neck cancers.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2025Review
- Review
- PD-L1 expression in recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in China (EXCEED study): a multicentre retrospective study.Journal of clinical pathology · 2025Article
- Predictive value of CPS combined with inflammatory markers for pathological remission of locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma after adjuvant immunochemotherapy.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2025Article
- Relationship Between Short-Term Outcomes and PD-L1 Expression Based on Combined Positive Score and Tumor Proportion Score in Recurrent or Metastatic Head and Neck Cancers Treated With Anti-PD-1 Antibody Monotherapy.Cancer reports (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Automated interpretation of PD-L1 CPS based on multi-AI models integration strategy in gastric cancer.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Molecular markers for the efficacy of neoadjuvant immunotherapy for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Review
- Article
- Distant Multilevel Spinal Metastasis Secondary to Hypopharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma.Cureus · 2024Article
- Concordance between four PD-L1 immunohistochemical assays and 22C3 pharmDx assay in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in a multicenter study.Journal of the National Cancer Center · 2024Article
- Digital Pathology Applications for PD-L1 Scoring in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Challenging Series.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Refining PD-1/PD-L1 assessment for biomarker-guided immunotherapy: A review.Biomolecules & biomedicine · 2024Review
- Cost analysis of archives in the pathology laboratories: from safety to management.Journal of clinical pathology · 2023Review
- Mechanistic insights into the interactions between cancer drivers and the tumour immune microenvironment.Genome medicine · 2023Article
- Review
- Electroporation in Head-and-Neck Cancer: An Innovative Approach with Immunotherapy and Nanotechnology Combination.Cancers · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Immune checkpoint inhibitors for blocking the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) axis are now available for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC) in relapsing and/or metastatic settings. In this work, we compared the resulting combined positive score (CPS) of PD-L1 using alternative methods adopted in routine clinical practice and determined the level of diagnostic agreement and inter-observer reliability in this setting. The study applied 5 different protocols on 40 tissue microarrays from HNSCC. The error rate of the individual protocols ranged from a minimum of 7% to a maximum of 21%, the sensitivity from 79% to 96%, and the specificity from 50% to 100%. In the intermediate group (1 ≤ CPS < 20), the majority of errors consisted of an underestimation of PD-L1 expression. In strong expressors, 5 out of 14 samples (36%) were correctly evaluated by all the protocols, but no protocol was able to correctly identify all the "strong expressors". The overall inter-observer agreement in PD-L1 CPS reached 87%. The inter-observer reliability was moderate, with an ICC of 0.774 (95% CI (0.651; 0.871)). In conclusion, our study showed moderate interobserver reliability among different protocols. In order to improve the performances, adequate specific training to evaluate PD-L1 by CPS in the HNSCC setting should be coordinated.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.