New technology screens hundreds-fold more T cell receptors (TCRs) than prior technologies to reveal rare TCRs with therapeutic potential
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. (PRWEB) MARCH 23, 2020
GigaMune, a cancer cell therapy company focused on T cell receptor (TCR) discovery and development, today announced the publication of results describing its patented T cell receptor discovery technology in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal, Nature Biotechnology. Scientists from University of Manchester, Stanford University Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and Immetacyte Ltd. contributed to the effort. The study has been published online at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0438-y and will be available in the upcoming print issue.
“We are thrilled that our TCR discovery technology has been published in Nature Biotechnology, one of the highest-impact journals in the biological sciences,” said Dr. David Johnson, Co-Founder of GigaMune and senior author on the study. “We look forward to continuing to apply our technology to address unmet clinical needs in solid tumors.”
The article, entitled “Massively parallel interrogation and mining of natively paired human TCRαβ repertoires”, describes a microfluidic method that captures TCRs from millions of single primary human T cells. Nucleic acids from the two TCR chains expressed within a single cells are physically linked inside emulsion microdroplets and used to build millions diverse full-length TCR expression libraries. The libraries are then expressed in mammalian cells to screen for cell therapy TCR candidates. The technology identified 2.9 million natively paired TCRs, and identified antigen-reactive TCRs that were as rare as <0.001% frequency in the original T cell repertoires.
“Prior methods for discovery of cell therapy TCR candidates are exceptionally slow,” said Matthew Spindler, PhD, Co-Founder of GigaMune and lead author on the study. “Our method profiles the functional activity of hundreds-fold more TCRs per experiment. This allows us to mine highly diverse human repertoires for rare antigen-reactive TCR cell therapy discovery as never before possible.”
About GigaMune
GigaMune Inc. is a cancer cell therapy company focused on T cell receptor (TCR) discovery and development, founded in 2017 as a spin-out from GigaGen. GigaMune’s patented TCR technologies facilitate discovery of rare TCRs from the immune repertoires of patients with exceptional response to cancer. GigaMune’s research efforts benefit from a strategic partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. GigaMune is located in South San Francisco, California. For more information visit http://www.gigamune.com.
