Jian Qiao Awarded NIH R01 Grant

Jian Qiao, M.D., Ph.D. has been awarded a multiple-PI NIH R01 subaward.

Dr. Qiao has been a site PI at UT Southwestern in a newly awarded MPI-NIH grant, entitled “TCR-antigen foundation model to empower TCR-based diagnostics and therapeutics.” The major goals of this grant are to use AI-based techniques to (A) discover TCRs for therapeutic use, (B) perform antigen discovery from spatial-TCR-sequencing data, and (C) develop TCR-based biomarkers for predicting immune-related adverse events (irAEs) for patients on ICI treatments.

The interaction between T cell receptors (TCRs) and antigens presented by MHC proteins is crucial for initiating antigen-specific T cell responses in various biomedical contexts. Understanding these interactions can provide insights into adaptive immunity, antigen discovery, TCRs- based therapeutics and the impact of T cells on immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) and other immunotherapy treatments.

This project aims to create platform technologies and resources with AI-based techniques, to accelerate the discovery of therapeutic TCRs, which will ultimately benefit patients by developing novel immunotherapies. Our biomarker method will provide an interpretable and non-invasive approach to extract clinically actionable information from patient TCR repertoire.

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Dr. Qiao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology. Learn more about the Qiao Lab: Jian Qiao, M.D., Ph.D. Lab