Abstract 5628: Immune repertoire sequencing facilitates gamma delta T cell clonal determination

Abstract Gamma-delta T cells are a small fraction of T lymphocytes with only 1-5% of the overall T cell population, but they are an important subset that have unique contributions to both innate and adaptive immunity. Gamma-delta T cells can recognize a broad range of antigens to provide rapid responses to pathogens, and can also interact with both immune cells and non-immune tissue cells triggering regulatory and cytotoxic responses. These unique features make them ideal candidates that could be targeted to induce durable immunity in the context of different pathologies. There has been growing interest in understanding the contributions of gamma-delta T cells to immunology and developing efficient gamma-delta T-cell-based therapies for cancer, infectious disease, and autoimmune disease. In this study, we have implemented T cell repertoire sequencing for high throughput characterization. Gamma-delta T cells were enriched from tissues and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). RNA was extracted and used to generate full length TCR libraries. Unique molecular identifiers (UMIs) were incorporated to discretely barcode each mRNA molecule, enabling absolute quantitative ranking of TCR clone abundance. Full length immune repertoire sequencing facilitates the detection of distinct and shared clones in tissue and blood samples, enabling the identification of disease specific clones to evaluate immunotherapy effects. In addition, RNA sequencing was performed for gene expression analysis of gamma-delta T cells to identify cell phenotypes. Citation Format: Chen Song, Ariel Erijman, Bradley W. Langhorst, Pingfang Liu, Eileen T. Dimalanta, Theodore B. Davis. Immune repertoire sequencing facilitates gamma delta T cell clonal determination [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 5628.