55 MET immunoreactivity and poor prognosis Before assessing the behavior of MET immunoreactivity across cancer surfaces, the heterogeneity of MET immunoreactivity across cores sampled in the center and periphery was evaluated using the ICC. The ICC for the center cores was 0.930 (0.905, 0.949) and the ICC for the periphery cores was 0.894 (0.851, 0.926) indicating almost perfect agreement between cores from the same cancer region. Evaluation of membranous MET immunoreactivity in both cancer regions (center and periphery) was possible in 183 (76.3%) cases, of which 4 (2.2%) oropharyngeal SCC were HPV-16 positive. Seen this low number, the HPV-16 positive oropharyngeal SCC were excluded from further analysis. The baseline characteristics of the remaining cancers are indicated in Table 2. The behavior of MET immunoreactivity across the remaining 179 cancer surfaces, was visualized by displaying corresponding percentages of MET positive – moderate (2) to strong (3) immunoreactivity (Materials and Methods) – cancer cells in the center and periphery as data points in a scatter plot (Supplementary Figure S5A). The result illustrates that data points are scattered across the entire chart area, indicating that the amount of MET immunoreactivity is either constant across the cancer (uniform negative or positive staining) or differs between the tumor center and periphery (variable staining). Table 2: Summary of baseline characteristics. Characterisitic No. of patients # % Sex Male 114 63.69 Female 65 36.31 Age at diagnosis (years) Mean (range) 62.97 (34 – 87) Smoking No 60 33.52 Yes 117 65.36 Missing 2 1.12 Alcohol No 81 45.25 Yes 96 53.63 Missing 2 1.12 Site Oral cavity 157 87.71 Oropharynx 22 12.29 3
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