Balancing the Count: Harmonizing Panel-Based Tumor Mutational Burden Assessment

The adaptive immune system poses a key barrier to tumorigenesis because of its ability to recognize tumor antigens and mount an immune response. This elicits a selective pressure on cancer cells to adopt mechanisms to evade immune cell detection. Undoubtedly, the best-described mechanism of immune evasion is the up-regulation of immune checkpoint mediators, of which the programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), encoded by the CD274 gene, is the most...