A high TGF-β expression suppresses the activity of CD8+ T-cells, dendritic cells, natural killer cells and other key immune cells in anti-tumour immunity in the TIME, while promoting the action of regulatory T-cells, thus making the entire TIME suppressive (Batlle and Massagué, 2019; Liu et al., 2020; Derynck et al., 2021). Here, CD8A is linked to neoplasm.