Though TMB and PD-L1 expression are unrelated, greater benefit was found in patients with high TMB and high PD-L1 expression treated with anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 agents in lung cancer, indicating synergistic association of the two independent biomarkers (Carbone et al., 2017; Peters et al., 2017; Hellmann et al., 2018). The gene discussed is PDCD1; the disease is lung cancer.