CD274 and metastatic neoplasm: It was thought that earlier disease stage might account for this finding, as significantly more patients in this study who were diagnosed at an earlier stage (overall and with respect to T stage alone) were found to have higher PD-L1 expression (Table 2), and there was a relative surplus of early-stage patients in the study cohort in comparison to the predominance of recurrent/metastatic disease in cohorts from the literature.