HLA Peptide Characterization: The Key to Safer TCR Therapies

TCR-T cell therapies represent the frontier of personalized medicine, but they carry a hidden
risk: off-target toxicity. If a therapeutic TCR recognizes a peptide on healthy heart or lung tissue
that looks similar to the tumor target (molecular mimicry), the results can be fatal.
Comprehensive HLA peptide characterization for TCR development is the only way to
mitigate this risk. Alithea Bio’s approach involves deep profiling of both tumor and healthy
tissue. By utilizing our HLA-Compass platform, developers can quantify the expression levels
of their target peptide across thousands of samples. As Prof. Dr. Nikolaos G. Sgourakis (CHOP)
notes, this level of precision is “exceptional for advancing immunotherapy research.