Yagi T, et al. - The prognostic impact of the programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression, tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) status, and their combination in esophageal cancer was investigated. They determined PD-L1 expression and TIL status (cluster of differentiation 8 (CD8) expression) by immunohistochemical analysis using a nonbiased database of 305 curatively resected esophageal cancers. They observed an unfavorable clinical outcome in correlation with PD-L1 expression in esophageal cancer. This supports its role as a prognostic biomarker. In addition, further classification of patients according to the clinical outcome was possible by combining PD-L1 expression with TIL status. These findings support the value of PD-L1 expression and TIL status as predictive tissue biomarkers and their possible utility for patient selection in clinical trials of drugs targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathways.