Advances in Adoptive TCR-T Cell Therapy

Adoptive T cell therapy, especially TCR-engineered T cell therapy (TCR-T), has gained increasing attention for solid tumors, via targeting the tumor antigens, such as tumor associate antigens, neoantigens, or virus-associated cancer antigens. Current studies on tumor antigens are mainly focused on tumor-associated antigens, which are also expressed in normal cells. By contrast, the neoantigen-specific expression on tumor cells seems to be better targeted. But only limited neoantigens are identified. In addition, the affinities of TCR recognition of MHC presented cancer epitope are varied from uM to mM. But their affinity is not directly relative to the cytotoxicity against tumors. Understanding the mechanism of TCR recognition of tumor antigens and its relationship with efficiency would be helpful for its clinical application.

This research topic aims to provide useful information about developing some new cancer targets and TCRs to broaden the application of TCR-T therapy. It will focus on two aspects that are identification of new antigens and TCRs from patients and clarification of the mechanism by which T cells effectively kill cancer cells. We welcome submissions covering, but are not limited to, the following sub-topics:

1. Novel cancer antigens with potential to be therapeutic vaccines that induce strong T cell responses in vivo.
2. Discovery of novel T cells with strong responses against tumors.
3. Molecular mechanism of T cells with strong cytotoxicity.
4. Structural information on the recognition of cancer antigens by TCR.
5. Clinic trials of TCR-T therapy.

Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.