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Cancer Immunology Project

A comprehensive study of cancer immunity and its application to cancer treatment

Project Leader TannoPhoto

Project Leader
Hidetaka Tanno

Achievements in 2024

In previous work, we developed a high-throughput technology capable of determining TCR and antibody sequences at the single-cell level, which was published in PNAS (2020) and Science Advances (2020). However, this technology was unable to determine the antigen specificity of TCRs and antibodies. In 2024, we independently developed a proprietary platform that can identify antigen-specific TCRs as well as TCR-like antibodies. Using this technology, we are generating various cancer-specific TCRs and TCR-like antibodies. In parallel, we established cell lines derived from cancer patients to provide a clinically relevant model system. We are currently evaluating the cancer-killing efficacy of these TCRs and antibodies using both in vitro and in vivo models.

T cells recognize antigen-HLA complexes presented by pathogenic cells via TCR.
There are diverse TCRs in human bodies including cancer-specific TCRs and virus-specific TCRs. Characterizing antigen-specificities of TCRs is necessary for engineered T cell therapy as well as vaccine development. However, it has been difficult to determine the antigen-specificities of TCRs. We are developing new technologies to identify TCR and antigen-HLA interactions at the repertoire level.

Publications

Key papers

  • H Tanno et al. (2020) “A Facile Technology for the High Throughput Sequencing of the Paired VH:VL and TCRβ:TCRα Repertoires.” Science Advances. 6(17):eaay9093
  • H Tanno et al. (2020) “Determinants governing T cell receptor α/ββ-chain pairing in repertoire formation of identical twins” PNAS. 117(1):532-540.