In this episode of On AIRR, Dr. Paul Thomas, reviews advances in the field of TCR sequencing. Dr. Thomas is a faculty member in the Department of Immunology of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His work has advanced our understanding of innate and adaptive immune responses and TCR specificity with a focus on responses to viral infections.

In Episode 18 of On AIRR, Dr. Thomas shares his journey from immunoparasitology to pioneering TCR repertoire sequencing. He began his scientific career studying innate immune responses to parasites during his graduate work in immunoparasitology. Motivated by a desire to use advanced molecular techniques, he moved to St. Jude for his postdoctoral research, where he contributed to the development of TCR repertoire sequencing methods. The discussion covers the evolution from single-chain TCR sequencing to the development of high-throughput paired sequencing methods, culminating in the TIRTL-seq approach. Dr. Thomas explains the technical and computational challenges in TCR pairing, the innovations that made large-scale studies possible, and the importance of data quality and curation in the field. The episode highlights the impact of these advances on understanding immune responses and the future of AIRR-based diagnostics.

Comments are welcome to the inbox of onairr@airr-community.org or on social media under the tag #onAIRR. Further information can be found here: https://www.antibodysociety.org/the-airr-community/airr-c-podcast.

The episode is hosted by Dr. Ulrik Stervbo and Dr. Zhaoqing Ding.

Announcements and links

• Paul Thomas Lab https://www.stjude.org/research/labs/thomas-lab.html
• Other:
  • TIRTL-seq: Deep, quantitative, and affordable paired TCR repertoire sequencing https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.16.613345
  • TIRTL-seq repository: https://github.com/pogorely/TIRTL
  • Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community (AIRR-C) https://www.airr-community.org
  • The Antibody Society (TAbS) https://www.antibodysociety.org

AIRR-C Seminar Series s https://www.antibodysociety.org/the-airr-community/airr-community-seminar-series/