The paradoxical coexistence of the favorable predictive effect and the unfavorable prognostic effect of category I organ metastases (Fig. 4A) helped explain the non-significant association of survival prospects with the number of category I organ metastases in the immunotherapy arm (Additional file 5: Fig. S2A), which was congruent with accumulating evidence supporting that adrenal gland or brain metastasis did not influence patients’ survival in the context of PD-(L)1 blockade of NSCLC [19, 20]. Here, CD274 is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.