Fig. 2

Performance of nAChR-associated signature for prognostic classification. A Kaplan–Meier curve for overall survival (OS) suggests that patients in high-risk groups (red curve) show a poorer OS than those in the low-risk group (blue curve); B Kaplan–Meier curve for progression-free survival shows that patients in the high-risk groups (red curve) have poorer progression-free survival than those in the low-risk group (blue curve); C Time-dependent ROC curve; the AUC values of the nAChR-based signature for three- (red curve), five- (green curve), and ten-year (blue curve) OS are annotated at the bottom right; D Principal component analysis shows that the high- (red dots) and low-risk (blue dots) groups were distinguishable based on the formula for the prognostic model; E Heatmap for the expression of components of the nAChR-based signature; the abscissa represents HNSCC samples which were divided into high- (red dots) and low-risk (blue dots) groups, and the ordinate represents the expression of nAChRs. The higher the level of expression, the darker the color (red and blue indicate upregulated and downregulated expressions, respectively); F Plot for the survival status based on the signature; G Risk score plot for the nAChR-based signature