T-cell receptor-β V and J usage, in combination with particular HLA class I and class II alleles, correlates with cancer survival patterns.

Class I and class II HLA proteins, respectively, have been associated with subsets of V(D)J usage resulting from recombination of the T-cell receptor (TCR) genes. Additionally, particular HLA alleles, in combination with dominant TCR V(D)J recombinations, have been associated with several autoimmune diseases. The recovery of TCR recombination reads from tumor specimen exome files has allowed rapid and extensive assessments of V(D)J usage, likely for cancer resident T-cells, across relatively large cancer datasets. The results from this approach, in this report, have permitted an extensive alignment of TCR-β VDJ usage and HLA class I and II alleles. Results indicate the correlation of both better and worse cancer survival rates with particular TCR-β, V and J usage-HLA allele combinations, with differences in median survival times ranging from 7 to 130 months, depending on the cancer and the specific TCR-β V and J usage/HLA class allele combination.