Fig. 1: PFA tumours from male patients are more stem-like and have a higher fraction of progenitor-like cells.

a, Sex differences in prognosis. Progression-free Kaplan–Meier survival plot for first-presentation patients with PFA-EPN (n = 300) who received gross total tumour resection and radiation. Numbers at risk are shown at the bottom. Statistical significance was calculated using a two-sided log-rank test; shaded areas indicate 95% confidence intervals. b, Literature summary of differences in the incidence of PFA-EPN between male (M) and female (F) individuals (C1–C4 denote dataset cohorts). c, Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) visualization of male and female samples in the tumour fraction from the PFA scRNA-seq cohort. d, Mean CancerSEA stemness score across the tumour fraction per sample, split by sex. e, UMAP visualization of tumour cell types in the tumour fraction from the PFA scRNA-seq cohort. f, Top three most active regulatory networks by tumour cell type. g, GP-like tumour cell fraction within the PFA sample tumour cells by sex. d,g, Female (n = 8) and male (n = 18). In box plots, the centre line denotes the median, box hinges indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles and whiskers mark 1.5× the interquartile range (IQR). P values were calculated using a two-sided Student’s t-test. h, Monocle3-inferred pseudotime trajectory of the GP-like tumour cluster split by sex. i,j, Kaplan–Meier curves of OS (i) and PFS (j) in male patients with PFA-EPN (n = 39), stratified by expression of the GP-like male-biased TF signature (low or high) in a microarray cohort treated with standard therapy (complete tumour resection and radiation). Numbers at risk are shown at the bottom. Statistical analyses were performed using a two-sided log-rank test; shaded areas indicate 95% confidence intervals.