Fig. 1

High ELR⁺CXCL expression is associated with poor OS under ICI in RCC patients. Levels of ELR⁺CXCLs (CXCL1, CXCL2, CXCL3, CXCL5, CXCL8) and PD-L1 mRNA expression in metastatic RCC patients on ICIs or everolimus were measured by RT-qPCR and correlated with OS in patients from our cohort (ICI treatment, 56 patients, a) and in published cohort (ICI treatment, 181 patients, b or everolimus, 130 patients, c). The value of the third quartile of ELR⁺CXCL expression was chosen as the cut-off value. We created a score reflecting the overexpression of each ELR⁺CXCL (score 0 = no ELR⁺CXCL overexpressed, score 6 = all 6 ELR⁺CXCL overexpressed). The score was correlated with OS. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to generate survival curves and analyses of censored data were performed using Cox models. Statistical significance (p-values) is indicated