ReviewCureus2026
Evolving Role of Immunotherapy in Advanced Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: Are Programmed Death-Ligand 1 (PD-L1) Cutoffs Still Relevant?
Review in Cureus, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed the management of advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) across first-line, second-line, and perioperative settings. Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression has served as the principal biomarker guiding patient selection for these agents, yet it is measured inconsistently across trials and antibody platforms, and its predictive value has come under renewed scrutiny as follow-up data have matured. This review synthesizes the pivotal randomized trials that established anti-programmed cell death protein-1 therapy in ESCC, critically appraises the pooled and patient-level meta-analyses that have re-examined outcomes across biomarker subgroups, and situates recent regulatory reassessment of PD-L1 thresholds within this broader evidence base. Assay heterogeneity between scoring systems, discordance across antibody clones, and the biological distinction between PD-L1 as a prognostic versus a predictive marker are examined as sources of continued uncertainty. The review concludes by considering emerging genomic and microenvironmental biomarkers that may eventually complement or refine PD-L1-based patient selection, and offers a framework for interpreting a single expression threshold as an approximate, assay-dependent stratifier rather than a precise biological boundary.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.