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Gastric cancer is a common cancer that affects millions of people worldwide. The accurate staging of this cancer is a critical first step upon which a patient's prognosis and treatment options are based. The conventional staging grid is based on three factors: tumor size, lymphnode involvement, and metastasis (TNM staging). However, the variablility of outcomes for patients within the same TNM stage strongly suggests that other key factors need to be included to obtain a more useful classification. Wen et al. examined immunological factors and scored them according to their associations with disease progression. Using only four immune parameters, they identified patients who were in the same stage according to their TNM classification to be at low, medium, or high risk of progressive disease based on their “immunoscore.” Read more in this issue of Cancer Immunology Research starting on page 524. The micrograph, from Fig. 5, is a slice of gastric tumor infiltrated by multiple immune cell types in various activation states. Artwork by Lewis Long.