Granzyme B is correlated with clinical outcome after PD-1 blockade in patients with stage IV non-small-cell lung cancer.

Background: A minority of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) benefit from treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). Ineffective effector function of activated T and NK cells may lead to reduced tumor cell death, even when these activated effector cells are released from their immune checkpoint brake. Hence, in this study we aimed to assess the association of baseline serum granzyme B, as well as germline variation of the gene, with clinical outcome to programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) blockade.