As previous studies have already proved that suppression of TP53 was closely related with tumor progression, metastasis and chemotherapy resistance [30, 31], we also discovered that low TP53 expression was associated with higher IC50 of cisplatin (Fig. 6A) and TP53 had negative correlation with PYGL at transcriptional level (R = -0.332, P = 3.38e-14) (Fig. 6B), which drew to a speculation that PYGL might promote HNSCC’s chemotherapy resistance by suppressing TP53’s expression. This evidence concerns the gene PYGL and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.