De novo identification of CD4⁺ T cell epitopes.

Abstract

CD4⁺ T cells recognize peptide antigens presented on class II major histocompatibility complex (MHC-II) molecules to carry out their function. The remarkable diversity of T cell receptor sequences and lack of antigen discovery approaches for MHC-II make profiling the specificities of CD4⁺ T cells challenging. We have expanded our platform of signaling and antigen-presenting bifunctional receptors to encode MHC-II molecules presenting covalently linked peptides (SABR-IIs) for CD4⁺ T cell antigen discovery. SABR-IIs can present epitopes to CD4⁺ T cells and induce signaling upon their recognition, allowing a readable output. Furthermore, the SABR-II design is modular in signaling and deployment to T cells and B cells. Here, we demonstrate that SABR-IIs libraries presenting endogenous and non-contiguous epitopes can be used for antigen discovery in the context of type 1 diabetes. SABR-II libraries provide a rapid, flexible, scalable and versatile approach for de novo identification of CD4⁺ T cell ligands from single-cell RNA sequencing data using experimental and computational approaches.