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Characterization of Cancer-Reactive T Cells and Neoantigen-specific T Cell Receptors

Sun, W.; Liu, S.; Yu, B.; Zhang, Z.; Bradley, P.; Bleakley, M.

2025-10-30 cancer biology
10.1101/2025.10.29.685473 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Not all tumor-infiltrating T cells are cancer-reactive (CR). Several studies have reported gene expression signatures associated with CR-T cells. To integrate these findings, we developed a computational workflow, CAT (Cancer-Associated T cells), which harmonizes existing CR-T cell signatures and applies them to identify CR-T cells across an atlas of one million T cells. Our findings reveal that the abundance of CR-T cells varies across cancer types and that baseline levels of CR-T cells predict patients responses to immunotherapy. In parallel, we established a high-throughput computational platform, Neo-TCR, for systematic screening of neoantigen-specific TCRs and their cognate neoantigens. The efficacy of Neo-TCR is validated by cross-validation studies and replications in two independent datasets. Together, our findings suggest a new direction for developing biomarkers for cancer detection and monitoring: integrating CR gene expression signatures with neoantigen-specific TCRs.

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