Investigating the Determinants of PD-L1 Therapeutic Benefit for Head and Neck Tumors by Single-cell RNA Sequencing

Immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), relies on boosting the immune system to kill the cancer cell and save the cancer patients’ lives. It has demonstrated a significant improvement in cancer patients' clinical outcomes. However, the clinical effectiveness of ICB treatment is not consistent among treated patients. To explore the mechanisms behind it, it is necessary to compare the treated patients with district clinical outcomes and identify the differences between these two groups of patients. In this study, we obtained tumor samples from five patients with head and neck cancer after the treatment programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/PD-L1 blockade. We highlighted the delta parts between two patient groups at the single-cell level to help enhance immunotherapy.