Deciphering head and neck cancer microenvironment: Single‐cell and spatial transcriptomics reveals human papillomavirus‐associated differences

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a major causative factor of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), and the incidence of HPV-associated HNSCC is increasing. The role of tumor microenvironment (TME) in viral infection and metastasis needs to be explored further. Thus we studied the molecular characteristics of primary tumors (PTs) and lymph node metastatic tumors (LNMTs) by stratifying them based on their HPV status using spatial transcriptomics. Six samples for spatial transcriptomics (ST), composed of matched primary tumors (PT) and lymph node metastases (LNMT), were collected from both HPV-negative (HPV−) and HPV-positive (HPV+) patients using the 10x Genomics Visium platform.