A Study Of Developing Head And Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Subtypes With Different Prognosis And Therapeutic Response By Multi-omics Data Analysis

Background Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma(HNSCC)is one of the most common malignant tumors.Due to its high heterogeneity in terms of molecular features,prognosis,mutational characteristics,and therapeutic response,identifying novel molecular subtypes to guide patient-specific treatment modalities is essential.Methods First,we collected and integrated multi-omics data(including m RNA,lnc RNA,mi RNA,methylation,and somatic mutations)of 386 HNSCC patients from TCGA database.Then,we used ten state-of-the-art multi-omics clustering algorithms to classify patients into two HNSCC subtypes with different molecular characteristics.The biological processes and pathways were evaluated.Additionally,we compared the immune cell infiltration,mutation landscape,and potential responses to immunotherapy and chemotherapy of the two subtypes.Results Using clustering algorithms,two molecular subtypes,CS1 and CS2,were identified.Compared with patients in the CS2 subtype,patients in the CS1 subtype had a worse prognosis.Multiple pro-tumor biological processes and pathways were enriched in the CS1 subtype,whereas B-cell activation and other immune activation biological processes and pathways were enriched in the CS2 subtype.For immune infiltration,the CS2 subtype demonstrated a higher level of immune cell infiltration,indicating a stronger anti-tumor immune response.A better response rate to immunotherapy was observed in the CS2 subtype compared with the CS1 subtype,indicating a better antitumor immune response in CS2 subtype,whereas the CS1 subtype was more sensitive to cisplatin,paclitaxel,and docetaxel.Conclusions With the combined analysis of five types of omics data by ten clustering algorithms,these findings may improve our understanding of the heterogeneity of HNSCC and help develop new strategies to guide individualized treatment of HNSCC.