MT-PoINT | Motif in T cells for the Prediction of INTeractions

Summary
T cells are a key element of the human immune system. Upon binding to antigenic peptides (called T cell epitopes), T cells can induce the death of infected cells or prime and regulate other immune cells. In cancer immunotherapy treatments, T cells are genetically re-engineered to recognize cancer epitopes and destroy malignant cells. Unfortunately, it still remains challenging to determine which T cells can target a specific epitope, both from a computational and experimental point of view. This limits mechanistic understanding of T-cell-mediated immunity and translational applications for disease treatments.
Thanks to advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies, sequence data of T cells coupled with their cognate epitopes are accumulating at an unprecedented pace, offering unique opportunities to develop data-driven T cell-epitope interaction predictors.
The goal of the MT-PoINT project (Motif in T cells for the Prediction of INTeractions) is to identify patterns in T cells sequences that underlie the binding specificity, interpret them at the structural level, and to develop sequence-based predictors of T cell-epitope interactions (Aim1) with a special focus on T cells targeting cancer epitopes (Aim2). My project will capitalize on a unique dataset of publicly available and in-house generated data that was not available in previous studies, and T cell sequence data from cancer patients of Lausanne University Hospital will allow me to benchmark the in-silico predictors in a clinically relevant setting.
Accurate predictions of TCR-epitope interactions can narrow down the list of T cell candidates for personalized cancer immunotherapies, and significantly accelerate cancer immunotherapy clinical developments.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101027973
Start date: 01-07-2021
End date: 30-06-2023
Total budget - Public funding: 191 149,44 Euro - 191 149,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

T cells are a key element of the human immune system. Upon binding to antigenic peptides (called T cell epitopes), T cells can induce the death of infected cells or prime and regulate other immune cells. In cancer immunotherapy treatments, T cells are genetically re-engineered to recognize cancer epitopes and destroy malignant cells. Unfortunately, it still remains challenging to determine which T cells can target a specific epitope, both from a computational and experimental point of view. This limits mechanistic understanding of T-cell-mediated immunity and translational applications for disease treatments.
Thanks to advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies, sequence data of T cells coupled with their cognate epitopes are accumulating at an unprecedented pace, offering unique opportunities to develop data-driven T cell-epitope interaction predictors.
The goal of the MT-PoINT project (Motif in T cells for the Prediction of INTeractions) is to identify patterns in T cells sequences that underlie the binding specificity, interpret them at the structural level, and to develop sequence-based predictors of T cell-epitope interactions (Aim1) with a special focus on T cells targeting cancer epitopes (Aim2). My project will capitalize on a unique dataset of publicly available and in-house generated data that was not available in previous studies, and T cell sequence data from cancer patients of Lausanne University Hospital will allow me to benchmark the in-silico predictors in a clinically relevant setting.
Accurate predictions of TCR-epitope interactions can narrow down the list of T cell candidates for personalized cancer immunotherapies, and significantly accelerate cancer immunotherapy clinical developments.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

MSCA-IF-2020

Update Date

28-04-2024
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.3. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
H2020-EU.1.3.2. Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
H2020-MSCA-IF-2020
MSCA-IF-2020 Individual Fellowships