Quantifying T-cell receptor diversity via expression analysis

T cell receptor (TCR) gene segments are comprised of numerous discontinuous coding segments that somatically rearrange to form the TCR gene during the development of a T cell. The TCR repertoire is highly diverse and estimated to exceed 10⁶ sequences in humans.  Clonal expansion of T cell populations can be observed in physiological T cell responses and in pathology, e.g., T-cell lymphomas, and are characterized by a loss of TCR polyclonality and emergence of dominant TCR clonotypes. Assessment of T cell clonality as a biomarker of T cell malignancy or an inflammatory response with TCR sequencing can be challenging. The nCounter^® TCR Diversity Panel enables the direct quantification of TCR gene loci expression with minimal sample handling, an overnight incubation, and simplified data analysis and as such can provide insight in TCR diversity without information on clonotype sequence.

In this re-airing of our workshop from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer 2021 meeting, Erin Piazza, PhD, Senior Bioinformatics Scientist from NanoString will introduce the concept of the TCR Diversity Panel and the corresponding TCR score calculated in the accompanying TCR Diversity Data Analysis Report and L.C.L.T. (Léon) van Kempen, PhD, Clinical Scientist in Molecular Pathology, Groningen University will discuss his experiences using the TCR Diversity Panel to study T cell lymphoma samples.