Key genes were further validated by quantitative real-time PCR in pretreatment tumor tissues.<h4>Results</h4>Five immune-related genes (CCL2, CXCL10, CXCL13, HLA-E, and IGKV1D-8) were identified as robust predictors of pCR and used to build the ANN model. Here, CXCL10 is linked to neoplasm.