ArticleClinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research2026
Tumoral and Systemic Immune Correlates of Response to Concurrent Pembrolizumab and Chemoradiotherapy in Patients with Resected High-Risk Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma.
Article in Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
25 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposePatients with pathologically high-risk, HPV-negative HNSCC recur frequently despite adjuvant cisplatin-radiation therapy (CRT). As CRT can upregulate PD-1/L1 immune checkpoints, adding pembrolizumab may reverse treatment-induced immunosuppression. NRG-HN003 was a phase I trial assessing the safety and recommended phase II schedule of adjuvant pembrolizumab with CRT. Here, we report exploratory immune and genomic correlates of disease-free survival (DFS). PATIENTS AND
methodsThirty-four patients received pembrolizumab with CRT. PD-L1 expression was quantified by combined positive score (CPS) and spatial localization of PD-L1+ cells was assessed by multispectral imaging of baseline tumors. Disruptive TP53 mutations were evaluated by whole-exome sequencing. Soluble serum biomarkers were evaluated by Luminex, and circulating immune subsets were profiled by spectral flow cytometry at baseline and post-treatment.
resultsPatients with PD-L1 CPS≥20 showed numerically lower DFS than those with CPS<20; however, higher densities of PD-L1+ stromal cells were associated with more favorable outcomes. Disruptive TP53 mutations were not a significant negative prognostic factor. Among soluble markers at baseline, elevated serum arginase-1 was associated with inferior DFS, while higher levels of GM-CSF, IL-2 and nectin-2 were associated with more favorable outcomes. In circulating immune cells, higher baseline frequencies of CD8+ granzyme K+ T cells, as well as higher post-treatment frequencies of CD8+ CD39+ and regulatory CD4+ T cells, were associated with improved DFS. Increased effector and central memory T cell populations, especially post-treatment, also showed favorable associations with DFS.
conclusionsThese findings highlight multiple potential immunologic correlates of pembrolizumab with CRT in high-risk HNSCC, supporting further evaluation and validation in larger, adequately powered trials.
Identifiers
What Socratic 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 Socratic graph.