Fig. 2

Internal validation of EIC on 247 early-stage (I–II) LUSC samples. A The heatmap of gene expression clusters for 247 early-stage (IIA–IV) LUSC samples by unsupervised NMF illustrates 4 distinct expression patterns. B Heatmap shows the cluster 2 (defined as EIC) exhibited high enrichment scores of gene signatures of T cell exhaustion, immunosuppressive cells, and immunosuppressive cytokine. C The comparison of the absolute fraction of TME cells between the EIC and the rest class. D,E Box plots show the differences of leukocyte fraction and TIL percentage between two classes. F Box plots shows the different expression levels of multiple inhibitory receptors between two classes. G Cytokine-, T cell receptor-, and epithelial mesenchymal transition-related hallmark gene sets and KEGG pathways enriched in the EIC. H ROC curve evaluated the predictive capacity of 167 exhausted immune classifier genes in early-stage LUSC samples. All statistical differences of two groups were computed by Wilcoxon rank-sum test; *, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001; ****, P < 0.0001