Fig. 1

Pathological evaluation of responses to neoadjuvant nivolumab with or without chemotherapy on the basis of PD-L1 expression. a Pathological responses in resected primary lung tumors following neoadjuvant nivolumab treatment and nivolumab plus chemotherapy, based on the remaining viable tumor cells percentage, for each patient (n = 46) who received surgical resection. The black horizontal line represents the MPR threshold (90% regression). Clinical characteristics, pathological and preoperative radiologic responses are annotated for each patient. b Proportion of MPR/non-MPR and pCR/non-pCR in enrolled patients after neoadjuvant nivolumab and nivolumab plus chemotherapy (A1 & A2, PD-L1 ≥ 50%). c Proportion of MPR/non-MPR and pCR/non-pCR in enrolled patients after neoadjuvant nivolumab plus chemotherapy (B1, 1% ≤ PD-L1 ≤ 49%; B2, PD-L1 < 1%). d Proportion of MPR/non-MPR and pCR/non-pCR in resected patients following nivolumab plus chemotherapy and neoadjuvant nivolumab. e MPR/non-MPR in resected patients following nivolumab plus chemotherapy and neoadjuvant nivolumab based on PD-L1 expression. p values were calculated through Fisher’s exact tests. ASC adenosquamous carcinoma, CR complete response, LUAD adenocarcinoma, LUSC squamous-cell carcinoma, MPR major pathological response, N nivolumab monotherapy, N/C nivolumab plus chemotherapy, pCR pathologic complete response, PD progression disease, PD-L1 programmed death ligand-1, PR partial response, RECIST Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors Version 1.1, SD stable disease. * The preoperative PET-CT displayed an additional FDG uptake in the right supraclavicular lymph node then the patient underwent a wedge resection and the right supraclavicular lymph node sampling. No variable tumor in resected lung tissue but metastasis in the supraclavicular lymph node. † The patient received systematic mediastinal lymph node dissection and radical lobectomy. No variable tumor in primary tumor while metastasis in the hilar lymph node