First Author Conversations Podcast

Episode 4: TIL Frequency & Tumor Reactivity?

There is already some evidence that successful immunotherapy is probably connected with reactivity against neo-antigens. But can we identify a population of T-cells whose receptors are specific to those antigens and take further advantage of those to create more effective immunotherapies for individuals?

Anna Pasetto is the first author on a recent publication in Cancer Immunology Research titled Tumor and Neo-Antigen Reactive T-cell Receptors Can be Identified Based on their Frequency in Fresh Tumor.

She and her co-authors hypothesized that the predominant clonotypes within a population of T-cells may indicate its tumor reactivity.

Anna describes for Tracy the strategy they used to identify the candidate clonotypes using deep sequencing of TCRB, single cell PCR and statistical analysis in figuring out which alpha chain was paired with which beta chain in the predominant receptor class.

This research is promising for increasing the effectiveness of cell based immuno-therapies.