Fig. 5

TOX expression level in the tumor-infiltrating (TI) T cells can predict prognosis and anti-PD-1 therapy response. a Violin plots to depict the distribution of TOX expression levels for three groups of cells derived from melanoma: T cells, other immune cells, and cancer cells. b Correlation between TOX expression level in the T cells and TOX expression level in the CD8⁺ T cells. c Overall survival analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohorts of patients with subcutaneous melanoma (SKCM). d Overall survival analysis of TCGA cohorts of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (with only the top 25% tumor mutation burden). The patients were classified into high-TOX for those with top 30% TOX-level and low-TOX for the rest. e–g Waterfall plot to depict anti-PD-1 immunotherapy response based on three independent cohorts of patients with melanoma from Hugo et al. (e), patients with NSCLC from Jung et al. (f), and patients with NSCLC recruited from Yonsei Cancer Center (YCC) (g). The baseline represents median level of TOX expression normalized to the level in the TI T cells. P values are calculated using the two-tailed Mann-Whitney U test (testing the association of responder status with level of TOX expression in TI T cells). h Area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC) for the retrieval of responders based on the TOX expression level in the TI T cells