Publications
bioRxivApr 2025 DOI:
10.1101/2025.04.24.649726

Scalable TCR synthesis and screening enables antigen reactivity mapping in vitiligo

Gaglione, Stephanie; Mukkamala, Rachit S; Krishna, Chirag; Smith, Blake E.; Wadsworth, Marc H.; Jelinsky, Scott A.; Perez, Caleb R.; Schmidt-Hong, Laura; Katz, Erica L.; Gellatly, Kyle; Ali, Lestat R.; Shen, Jiao; Holec, Patrick V.; Zhao, Qingyang Henry; Chan, A.; Kim, Ellen Janine; Kravarik, Kellie M.; Guzova, Julia A.; Dobson, Connor S.; Singh, Harshabad; Garber, Manuel; Dougan, Michael; Dougan, Stephanie K.; Harris, John E.; Winkler, Aaron; Birnbaum, Michael E.
Product Used
Oligo Pools
Abstract
T cell receptors (TCRs) mediate antigen recognition in adaptive immunity, yet large-scale mapping of TCR-antigen interactions remains a major challenge. Current approaches to synthesize and functionally screen TCRs remain technically complex and limited in throughput. We introduce a modular strategy, TCRAFT, to rapidly construct tens of thousands of TCRs for < each while maintaining TCRα-β pairing with >99% accuracy. We integrate this approach with a high-throughput antigen discovery platform to enable library-on-library TCR-antigen screening. We reconstruct and screen 3,808 TCRs from vitiligo lesions, linking TCR specificity to transcriptional phenotypes for antigen-reactive T cells. To demonstrate scalability, we synthesize and screen 30,810 TCRs from donors with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma to capture antigen-specific TCRs. This workflow reduces the cost and complexity of large-scale TCR screening, enabling the expansion of the known landscape of antigen-specific TCRs in vitiligo with a method that can be readily extended to other immunological applications.
Product Used
Oligo Pools

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