Profiling the TCR Beta Repertoire in NSCLC Donors

Oncology researchers have been exploring TCRβ sequencing as a potential predictor for how cancer patients will respond to immunotherapy treatments.

At the AACR Advances in Liquid Biopsies conference in Miami in mid-January, researchers from Biodesix, Inc. shared their most recent findings in this area. Co-authored by Astarte’s Benjamin Tjoa, the research evaluated peripheral blood lymphocytes from Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer donors using TCRβ sequencing.

Ben and his research team at Astarte contributed to the CMV model antigen study. They cultured primary PBMC from CMV-positive, HLA-A02-positive donors with either whole-cell lysate from CMV-infected cells or CMV peptide, then harvested the cells for flow cytometry to measure for pp65-responsive CD8+ T cells and RNA.

Biodesix continues to investigate the clinical utility of sequencing the immune repertoire in NSCLC patients receiving immunotherapy.

"Good correlations between data from cell-based assay and the molecular analysis strongly highlight the potential of the T Cell Receptor (TCR) beta repertoire analysis as a predictor for immune responses."
-Benjamin Tjoa, Ph.D., Astarte Biologics

This post originally appeared on the Astarte Biologics blog and has been modified for Patch.