Further investigation revealed that the inducible but not continuous expression of PD-L1 is associated with activated CD8+ T cells in hepatocellular carcinoma (Xie et al., 2016), although the expression of PD-L1 is not independently prognostic (Wang X. et al., 2016; Xie et al., 2016). Here, CD274 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.