Fig. 3

AIM2 upregulation highly correlates with the activation of interferon and inflammation-related pathways and the expression of PD-L1 in the primary tumors derived from OSCC patients with a poorer responsiveness to radiotherapy. A Experimental flowchart for generating AIM2 gene signature and performing GSEA simulation. B Histogram for Hallmark genesets with positive NES and statistical significance (p and q < 0.05) in GSEA simulation against AIM2 gene signature. C The plot of enrichment score for IFNγ-responsive and TNFα/NF-κB signaling axis-regulated genesets in GSEA simulation against AIM2 gene signature. D Scatchard plot derived from TIMER2.0 for the correlation of AIM2 mRNA levels with tumor purity and infiltration levels of macrophages, CD8 + T cells and NK cells against TCGA HNSCC. E Scatchard plot for the co-expression of AIM2 and PD-L1 in TCGA HNSCC primary tumors (left) and GSE42743 OSCC samples derived from patients without (middle) or with (right) the indicated records. In D and E, the solid and dashed lines shown in red represent the 95% confidence bands (dashed) of the best-fit line (solid) in Simple Linear Regression