In the past decades, pre-clinical experiments and clinical trials showed significant efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade in various cancers (19–21), indeed, several immune checkpoint inhibitors including anti-PD-1 have now been approved by the FDA for the treatment of melanoma, non-small-cell lung carcinoma, kidney carcinoma, gastric cancer, etc. The programmed cell death pathway is one of the most characterized immune evasion mechanisms (22). The gene discussed is PDCD1; the disease is renal carcinoma.