Fig. 1: NKG2A⁺ cells are enriched in CD103⁺ CD39⁺ (DP) CD8 T cells in HNSCC tumors.

a Flow cytometry analysis and (b) summary of NKG2A expression by CD8 T cells from the blood and the tumor of HNSCC patients (n = 25). c Unsupervised clustering of blood (red) and tumor-infiltrating (cyan) CD3⁺ CD8⁺ T cells isolated from 13 HNSCC patients. d Normalized expression of CD103, CD39 and NKG2A on CD8 T cells from blood and tumor. e NKG2A expression on blood and tumor CD8 T cells (positive cells are shown as red dots), with B1 and B2 representing subsets of NKG2A⁺ cells in the blood, and T1, T2 and T3 representing subsets of NKG2A⁺ cells in the tumor. f Phenotype of the different subsets of NKG2A⁺ CD8 T cells (n = 13). g Frequency of DN (CD39⁻ CD103⁻ ), SP (CD39⁻ CD103⁺ ) and DP (CD39⁺ CD103⁺ ) cells among NKG2A⁻ (left) and NKG2A⁺ (right) CD8 TILs in HNSCC patients (n = 25). h Summary of the expression of NKG2A by DP CD8 TILs in HPV⁻ (n = 23) and HPV⁺ (n = 18) HNSCC patients. Horizontal lines indicate the mean ± SEM. NS= not significant; p-values were determined by paired 2-tailed t test (b), by one-way analysis of variance with Tukey’s post hoc testing (g), or unpaired 2-tailed t test (h).