Abstract: In the era of personalized immunotherapy for lung cancer, how to effectively screen potential beneficiaries of programmed death-1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) immune checkpoint inhibitors has become a new challenge. The expression levels of PD-L1 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can be detected by immunohistochemistry, which provides accurate and reliable information for predicting the efficacy of PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy and prognosis in advanced NSCLC. In addition, traditional pathology can be used to observe major pathological response (MPR) to further evaluate the efficacy of neoadjuvant immunotherapy for early/middle-stage NSCLC. This review summarized the current progress and future development of personalized immunotherapy for NSCLC under the guidance of pathology.

Key words: Non-small cell lung cancer, Immune checkpoint inhibitor, Immunohistochemistry, Pathology evaluation