Antigen Discovery by Chemical Crosslinking – Paper in Cell Reports Methods
We are excited to share that our paper, MR1-ligand cross-linking identifies vitamin B6 metabolites as TCR-reactive antigens has just been published in Cell Reports Methods.
The study explores a fascinating but highly understudied area of immunology: how the immune system recognizes antigens beyond the classical protein fragments usually presented to T cells by MHC. One such pathway involves MR1, a molecule that presents metabolites to specialized T cells, enabling the immune system to detect changes in cellular metabolism during infection or cancer.
Until now, it has been challenging to identify which metabolites MR1 actually presents. To address this, we developed a new approach using chemical crosslinking to lock antigens into place on MR1, followed by mass spectrometry to characterize them.
Using this method, we discovered that several vitamin B6 metabolites can be presented by MR1 in cancer cell lines - an intriguing finding that opens up new questions about the role of metabolism in immune recognition.
Reference: Schmidlin et al. Cell Reports Methods, Volume 5, Issue 8, 101120