Structural basis for the therapeutic efficiency of optimal-affinity T cell receptors

Cancer immunotherapy is gaining a lot of interest for its potential to boost a person's own immune system to attack tumours, but treatment efficacy and patient response have so far been unpredictable. Among the most important cells in the immune system are the T-cells that mediate adaptive immunity via their T-cell receptors (TCRs). TCRs recognise invaders from small molecules (peptides) presented to them by so-called antigen-presenting cells via major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins. This process is extremely specific in vivo and harnessing this specificity could provide a breakthrough in immunotherapy. The EU-funded TCRabX project is using high-tech methods to study the detailed 3D structures of TCRs bound to MHC proteins to identify the TCR contact regions.