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Article History

Received: 14 May 2024

Revised: 15 July 2024

Accepted: 9 August 2024

First Online: 29 August 2024

Competing interests

: US and VB are employees at BioNTech SE. US is co-founder and shareholder of TRON, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech SE. AK received fees for consulting, advisory, speaker’s roles and/or research funding from PUMA BioTechnology, AstraZeneca, Merck, MSD, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Avvinity Therapeutics. HM has personal financial interests with AstraZeneca, MSD, GSK, Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Warwickshire Head Neck Clinic Ltd; institutional financial interests with AstraZeneca, GSK PLC, Sanofi Pasteur, MSD, GSK Biologicals, Silence Therapeutics; leadership roles: Chief of Liteform Trial Steering Committee, Chair of NIMRAD Trial Steering Committee, President of the British Association of Head Neck Oncologists, Trial Steering Group member of the MRC CTU Cancer Trials Steering Committee, Council member of the International Association of Oral Oncology, Director of the Institute for Head Neck Studies and Education, Secretary of the Head Neck Cancer InterGroup. HM is a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care. All other authors have no conflict of interest.

: An informed consent was obtained from all participants in this study. These patients had consented for their samples to be used for translational research and all experimental protocols used in this study were carried out in accordance with the accelerated programme protocol at the University Hospital Birmingham (UHB) NHS trust (Sponsor reference RG14-114, Research Ethics Committee West Midlands, Ethics Approval 14/YH/1101).