Preclinical and clinical studies have revealed that various factors can affect the clinical outcomes of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 monotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC; these factors include PD-L1 expression, the presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), the tumor mutation burden (TMB), human leukocyte antigen class I (HLA-I) genotype, T-cell repertoire diversity, the gene expression profile and the gut microbiota [3–7]. Here, CD274 is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.