Subsequently, we aimed to further explore and validate these observations with therapeutic outcomes using a comprehensive bulk RNAseq dataset comprising 73 pre-treatment samples from patients with advanced melanoma who underwent anti-PD-1, or anti-PD-1 and CTLA-4 combination therapy (total n = 73; n = 41 anti-PD-1) [30, 46]. Here, PDCD1 is linked to melanoma.