Anna Elia, Omer Tirosh, Gal Dinstag, Leon Gugel, Yaron Kinar, Tzivia Gottlieb, Eli Pikarsky, Ranit Aharonov, Jonathan Arnon, & Aron Popovtzer

July 2025

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) prolong survival in advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), yet response remains widely varied, necessitating more accurate and applicable biomarkers. This paper describes an analysis of ENLIGHT-DP in HNSCC patients treated with first-line programmed death (PD)-1 inhibitors. The analysis shows that in patients treated with monotherapy ICI, ENLIGHT-DP predicts response with ROC AUC of 0.74 while CPS, which is the standard biomarker, is not predictive. Utilizing a predetermined binary cutoff (established on independent cohorts), ENLIGHT-DP achieves 75% positive predictive value (PPV), which is superior to CPS.
Thus, ENLIGHT-DP accurately predicts response to PD-1 inhibitors treatment in HNSCC, relying solely on easily accessible H&E scanned slides.

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