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Scalable TCR synthesis and screening enable antigen reactivity mapping in vitiligo

Gaglione, Stephanie A
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 J
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Abstract

T cells initiate targeted immune responses using T cell receptors (TCRs) to recognize specific antigens. Mapping TCRs to antigens at scale remains a major challenge. Here, we developed an approach to synthesize and functionally screen tens of thousands of TCRs simultaneously. TCR rapid assembly for functional testing (TCRAFT) uses a modular strategy to rapidly and inexpensively construct large pools of TCRs from sequences while maintaining TCRα/β pairing. We applied TCRAFT to reconstruct over 3,800 TCRs from vitiligo blister fluid and mapped these TCRs to specific peptide-major histocompatibility complexes using RAPTR, an activation-based library-on-library screening approach. Vitiligo antigen-specific T cells displayed pronounced clonal expansion and transcriptomic signatures similar to antigen-specific T cells in melanoma, pointing to shared features of disease-relevant T cells in autoimmunity and cancer. Demonstrating scalability, we synthesized and screened over 30,800 TCRs from donors with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma to capture antigen-reactive TCRs. Our approach expands the scale and accessibility of TCR-antigen screening, which is critical to understanding immunity and developing new immunotherapies.

Source

Gaglione SA, Mukkamala RS, Krishna C, Smith BE, Wadsworth MH 2nd, Jelinsky SA, Perez CR, Schmidt-Hong L, Katz EL, Gellatly KJ, Ali LR, Shen J, Holec PV, Zhao QH, Chan AO, Xu EJK, Kravarik KM, Guzova JA, Dobson CS, Singh H, Garber M, Dougan M, Dougan SK, Harris JE, Winkler A, Birnbaum ME. Scalable TCR synthesis and screening enable antigen reactivity mapping in vitiligo. Immunity. 2026 Jan 28:S1074-7613(26)00001-4. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2026.01.001. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41610844.

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DOI
10.1016/j.immuni.2026.01.001
PubMed ID
41610844
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© 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).