There are promising immunotherapies in development and trials for various cancers that aim to boost CD8+ T cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity, which include adaptive cell transfer of tumor-reactive T cells (either native or engineered to express tumor specific T cell receptors or chimeric antigen receptors), dendritic cell cancer vaccines (DCVax), and immune checkpoint blockades (including anti-PD-1, anti-PD-L1, and anti-CTLA-4 antibodies) [22,23]. The gene discussed is CD8A; the disease is cancer.