LAUSR

Extranodal naturalkiller/T-cell lymphoma (ENKTL) is a distinct subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) with aggressive clinical course and is closely associated with Epstein Barr virus (EBV) infection [1]. Due to the unique feature that majority of ENKTL patients have involvement of the upper aerodigestive tract (UADT), the commonly used international prognostic index (IPI) system forNHL is not applicable for ENKTL as most of the patients would be divided into the low-risk group [2]. Thus, an optimal prognostic system for ENKTL remains undefined. New models particularly constructed for ENKTL have been reported and several potential risk factors such as regional lymph node involvement, nasal type disease, primary tumor invasiveness, and EBV-DNA, were identified as independent prognostic factors [3–5]. However, these prognosticmodels presented inconsistent predictive performance across different studies, and only clinical parameters were used to establish the models. Considering the tumor heterogeneity of ENKTL, exploring risk factors at the molecular level