Asano N, et al. - The clinicopathological relevance of human leucocyte antigen (HLA) and β2 microglobulin (β2M) expressions were comprehensively analyzed by researchers in adult T cell leukaemia/lymphoma (ATLL) cells and programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in lymphoma or stromal cells and they sought to speculate the overall survival of patients with ATLL. Among the enrollees, 74% were positive for HLA, 72% were positive for β2M and 39% were positive for both HLA and β2M in the cell membrane (HLAm+β2Mm+). It was deduced that the membranous expression of HLA and β2M possibly reflected the immune response and would be useful to predict prognosis before starting ATLL therapy.