Speaker: Bo Li, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine,University of Pennsylvania

Time: 10:00-11:00 a.m., Aug 12, 2024, GMT+8

Venue: Rm B101, Lui Che-woo Building, PKU

Abstract: 

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Early detection of most cancer types results in reduced mortality, and hence many clinical approaches have been developed to identify malignancies at early-stage. However, conventional diagnostic methods, such as serum protein biomarkers or imaging scans, remain insensitive at this stage due to limited tumor size and cancer-derived molecular materials. In the past decade, we have explored, developed and optimized a novel approach to detect cancer from the host adaptive immune responses. Specifically, we search for the T cells in the blood repertoire that are associated with cancer and use their T cell receptors (TCR) as sensors of malignancies. In this talk, I will cover the rationale of this approach and the collection of computational tools we have developed to progressively dissect the blood TCR repertoire to find cancer signals. At the end of this talk, I will present a recent study that we implemented this approach to high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma, a task considered as the ‘holy-grail’ of early cancer detection. By analyzing the TCR repertoires of HGSOC patients using our cutting-edge computational tools, we were able to identify a strong, yet transient signal in the blood that is up to 4 years prior to conventional HGSOC diagnosis.

Source: School of Life Sciences, PKU