Despite advances in chemoradiotherapy and targeted therapies, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), including programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), programmed cell death 1 (PD-1), and cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4) represent promising advances in the treatment of lung cancer (Hiley et al., 2016; Bhandari et al., 2021; Fountzilas et al., 2021); however, the clinical response rate of ICIs is only 20%, which can seriously hinder its wider application (Borghaei et al., 2015; Brahmer et al., 2015; Reck et al., 2016; Rittmeyer et al., 2017). Here, PDCD1 is linked to lung cancer.