ImmunoMap: A Bioinformatics Tool for T-cell Repertoire Analysis

Despite a dramatic increase in T-cell receptor (TCR) sequencing, few approaches biologically parse the data in a fashion that both helps yield new information about immune responses and may guide immunotherapeutic interventions. To address this issue, we developed a method, ImmunoMap, that utilizes a sequence analysis approach inspired by phylogenetics to examine TCR repertoire relatedness. ImmunoMap analysis of the CD8 T-cell response to self-antigen (K-b-TRP2) or to a model foreign antigen (K-b-SIY) in naive and tumor-bearing B6 mice showed differences in the T-cell repertoire of self-versus foreign antigen-specific responses, potentially reflecting immune pressure by the tumor, and also detected lymphoid organ-specific differences in TCR repertoires. When ImmunoMap was used to analyze clinical trial data of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes from patients being treated with anti-PD-1, ImmunoMap, but not standard TCR sequence analyses, revealed a clinically predicative signature in pre- and posttherapy samples. (C) 2017 AACR.