Cancer Immunology Project
Anti-tumor immunity for cancer gene therapy Project
Research Summary
T cells play a critical role in adaptive immunity. They express an enormous repertoire of TCRs on their surfaces. Using these TCRs, T cells recognize antigen-HLA complexes presented by pathogenic cells and eliminate them. Therefore, elucidating the interactions between TCRs and antigen-HLA complexes will be useful for developing new therapeutics and preventive vaccines. For example, cancer-specific TCRs have shown promising results in recent clinical trials. However, it is still difficult to find useful antigen-specific TCRs. In our project, we are developing new technology that can identify TCR-antigen-HLA interactions in a high-throughput manner. By employing this technology, we are comprehensively analyzing cancer patients’ TCR-antigen-HLA repertoires to discover cancer-specific TCRs that can be used for T cell therapies. We will also apply this technology to elucidate the mechanisms of virus infections and autoimmune diseases.
Selected Publications
- M Kuraoka et al. (2022) “Infant Antibody Repertoires during the First Two Years of Influenza Vaccination” mBio.
- J Li et al. (2021) “Molecular Level Characterization of Circulating Aquaporin-4 Antibodies in Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder” Neurology Neuroimmunology&Neuroinflam mation.
- H Tanno et al. (2020) “A Facile Technology for the High Throughput Sequencing of the Paired VH:VL and TCRβ:TCRα Repertoires.” Science Advances.
- H Tanno et al. (2020) “Determinants governing T cell receptor α/β-chain pairing in repertoire formation of identical twins” PNAS.
- CH Lee et al. (2017) “IgG Fc domains that bind C1q but not effector Fcγ receptors delineate the importance of complement-mediated effector functions.” Nature Immunology.
- JR McDaniel et al. (2016) “Ultra-high-throughput sequencing of the immune receptor repertoire from millions of lymphocytes.” Nature protocols.
- B Wang et al. (2016) “Discovery of high affinity anti-ricin antibodies by B cell receptor sequencing and by yeast display of combinatorial VH: VL libraries from immunized animals.” mAbs.