I have just read or heard in a video that some of the surviving patients had previously failed ici treatment.

Perhaps in that era of ici treatment they were more likely to treat with ici and pdl1 expression was not necessarily known before it was tried.

I know there is a lot of recent efforts to prevent treatment with ici if the tumor is not pdl1 positive.

But 5 years ago maybe that testing was nit as commonplace

From Dr. J recent interview:

"Jay Lalezari:15:08: Yeah, the patients who got the checkpoint inhibitor, it was completely up to the treating oncologist. And actually several of them had previously received a checkpoint inhibitor and failed. So this was a Hail Mary on the part of the treating oncologist"

Ps. No, I'm not saying they were expressing pdl1 before leronlimab. But they received ici before the leronlimab treatment anway