Besides, although recent researches showed that the increasing MDSCs and M2 macrophages were markers for poor prognosis in cancer [42] due to promoting invasiveness [43] or tumor progression [44], MDSCs and CD68+CD163+M2-like macrophages in the present study only were provisionally elevated in NSCLC patients during radiotherapy. This evidence concerns the gene CD163 and non-small cell lung carcinoma.