Trial reportJournal for immunotherapy of cancer2024
Association of a gene-expression subtype to outcome and treatment response in patients with recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma treated with nivolumab.
Trial report in Journal for immunotherapy of cancer, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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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.
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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
9 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identifying head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: HPV-associated signature by integrating bulk and single-cell sequencing data.Medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Contemporary Management of Malignancies of the Parotid Gland: A State-of-the-Art Review.Otolaryngology--head and neck surgery : official journal of American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery · 2026Review
- Fragmenting the future with FLARE: a comprehensive fragmentomics pipeline based on long-read nanopore sequencing.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Article
- Interferon Epsilon Loss Is Elusive 9p21 Link to Immune-Cold Tumors, Resistant to Immune Checkpoint Therapy, and Endogenous CXCL9/10 Induction.Journal of thoracic oncology : official publication of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer · 2025Review
- Immunotherapy in recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: PD-L1 and beyond.Pathologica · 2025Review
- Molecular insights into immune evasion in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas: Toward a promising treatment strategy.Oncology research · 2025Review
- LAT1 expression in head and neck cancer: a prognostic biomarker with potential relevance for BNCT.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
22 authors at 11 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundImmune checkpoint inhibitors have been approved and currently used in the clinical management of recurrent and metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC) patients. The reported benefit in clinical trials is variable and heterogeneous. Our study aims at exploring and comparing the predictive role of gene-expression signatures with classical biomarkers for immunotherapy-treated R/M HNSCC patients in a multicentric phase IIIb trial.
methodsClinical data were prospectively collected in Nivactor tiral (single-arm, open-label, multicenter, phase IIIb clinical trial in platinum-refractory HNSCC treated with nivolumab). Findings were validated in an external independent cohort of immune-treated HNSCC patients, divided in long-term and short-term survivors (overall survival >18 and <6 months since the start of immunotherapy, respectively). Pretreatment tumor tissue specimen from immunotherapy-treated R/M HNSCC patients was used for PD-L1 (Tumor Proportion Score; Combined Positive Score (CPS)) and Tumor Mutational Burden (Oncopanel TSO500) evaluation and gene expression profiling; classical biomarkers and immune signatures (retrieved from literature) were challenged in the NIVACTOR dataset.
resultsCluster-6 (Cl6) stratification of NIVACTOR cases in high score (n=16, 20%) and low score (n=64, 80%) demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival in the high-score cases (p=0.00028; HR=4.34, 95% CI 1.84 to 10.22) and discriminative ability reached area under the curve (AUC)=0.785 (95% CI 0.603 to 0.967). The association of high-score Cl6 with better outcome was also confirmed in: (1) NIVACTOR progression-free survival (p=4.93E-05; HR=3.71, 95% CI 1.92 to 7.18) and objective-response-rate (AUC=0.785; 95% CI 0.603 to 0.967); (2) long survivors versus short survivors (p=0.00544). In multivariate Cox regression analysis, Cl6 was independent from Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, PDL1-CPS, and primary tumor site.
conclusionsThese data highlight the presence of underlying biological differences able to predict survival and response following treatment with immunotherapy in platinum-refractory R/M HNSCC that could have translational implications improving treatment selection. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: EudraCT Number: 2017-000562-30.
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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.