Phage display enables machine learning discovery of cancer antigen-specific TCRs.

Croce, Giancarlo; Lani, Rachid; Tardivon, Delphine; Bobisse, Sara; de Tiani, Mariastella; Bragina, Maiia; Perez, Marta A S; Michaux, Justine et al. · Sci Adv · 2025

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

T cells targeting epitopes in infectious diseases or cancer play a central role in spontaneous and therapy-induced immune responses. Epitope recognition is mediated by the binding of the T cell receptor (TCR), and TCRs recognizing clinically relevant epitopes are promising for T cell-based therapies. Starting from a TCR targeting the cancer-testis antigen NY-ESO-1<sub>157-165</sub> epitope, we built large phage display libraries of TCRs with randomized complementary determining region 3 of the β chain. The TCR libraries were panned against NY-ESO-1, which enabled us to collect thousands of epitope-specific TCR sequences. Leveraging these data, we trained a machine learning TCR-epitope interaction predictor and identified several epitope-specific TCRs from TCR repertoires. Cellular assays revealed that the predicted TCRs displayed activity toward NY-ESO-1 and no detectable cross-reactivity. Our work demonstrates how display technologies combined with TCR-epitope interaction predictors can effectively leverage large TCR repertoires for TCR discovery.

Medical subject headings