Derived from 12 chemokine gene signatures [13, 14] and 9 marker genes [6], we proposed a novel gene signature composed of 13 chemokine genes (LAMP3, CCL2, CCL3, CCL4, CCL5, CCL18, CCL19, CCL21, CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCL11, CXCK13, CXCR4) to specifically evaluate HNSCC TLS at the transcriptomic level from the dataset of TCGA (HNSCC) (Fig. 1A). This evidence concerns the gene CXCL9 and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.