Since nuclear grade has shown prognostic abilities in RCC-specific survival and was a covariate in the commonly used prognostic models for localized RCC [3, 14, 15], these results suggest that differences in TTR and OS between PD-L1-positive and -negative groups might be due to the imbalance in the number of patients with higher nuclear grade. The gene discussed is CD274; the disease is renal cell carcinoma.