Fig. 2: Clinical outcomes and molecular differences between male and female patients with ICB treatment.

a Univariate survival analysis in the Cox proportional hazard model for female patients with immunotherapy treatment compared with male patients in nine cancer types from five data sets. Square color indicates OS advantage in female (red) or male (blue). Square size indicates the significance of cox p-value. Black horizontal lines indicate the 95% CI. b The gender difference for molecular biomarkers reported for immunotherapy (x axis) across multiple cancer types (y axis) in seven immunotherapy data sets. Two-sided Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test was used for continuous variables and Fisher’s exact test was used for discrete variables. Blue cell: male-bias with p < 0.05, light blue cell: male-bias with 0.05 ≤ p < 0.2, pink cell: female-bias with 0.05 ≤ p < 0.2. Empty cells indicate the unavailability of data. Sample size for each data set was listed in Supplementary Table 2. ccRCC clear cell renal cell carcinoma, BLCA bladder cancer, COAD colorectal cancer, ESCA esophagogastric cancer, GBM glioma, HNSC, head and neck cancer, NSCLC non-small-cell lung cancer, PanCan multiple cancer types with small sample size. PD-L1/PD-L2 programmed cell death ligand 1/2, CTLA-4 cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4. GEP T cell-inflamed gene expression profile, CYT cytolytic activity.