Our Technology
Tope-seq
T Cell Epitope Sequencing
Tope-seq is a high-throughput, cell-based screening platform to biologically and accurately characterize TCRs.
Our Platform
Platform overview
Synthetic antigen-presenting cells (sAPCs) are engineered to express libraries of short peptide-coding “minigenes”, relevant HLA alleles and a proprietary reported fusion protein with a Granzyme B cleavage site.
The sAPCs are co-cultured with T cells of interest. When a T cell recognizes a peptide–HLA complex, it delivers granzyme B through the immune synapse, which triggers cleavage of the reporter inside the target cell. This creates a fluorescent signal shift that marks only those cells experiencing genuine, functional T cell engagement and captures physiologically relevant responses, including low-affinity interactions.
Reporter-positive cells are isolated by high-speed fluorescence cell sorting.
The embedded DNA minigenes are recovered, amplified and sequenced.
The analysis enables unbiased identification of epitopes recognized by the T cells of interest, across millions of candidates, in a single experiment. The assay set up can be modified slightly to discover novel TCRs against sets of high-value epitope targets.
The result is a highly scalable, function-based system that reveals the epitopes recognized by the T-cells of interest—including physiologically relevant, low-affinity interactions that affinity-only methods miss.
With Tope-seq you get a clear picture of what targets your T cells of interest are recognizing.
Key Technology Advantages
With our flexible and modular genetic libraries we can mix-and-match any of our off-the-shelf minigene libraries with any HLA allele.
Custom workflows are simple thanks to our library construction workflows and reporter cell line bank.
High-speed cell sorting and deep sequencing readout lets us functionally test T cell populations against reporter cell libraries containing millions of peptide-coding sequences in parallel.
Delivering our Technology to You
I-SAFE
Detect off-target interactions to de-risk TCR therapies before the clinic
Advance only the safest TCRs
Screen TCRs against a synthetic library representing the entire human proteome
Detect potential off-target interactions early to reduce risk of toxic effects and clinical failure
Use flexible, reusable minigene libraries (including SNP-based options) to build a precise safety profile for every TCR
I-SEARCH
Discover novel TCRs to expand your pipeline with high-quality candidates
Identify new antigen-specific TCRs
Customize the screening assay to identify new therapeutic TCRs
Obtain a hit lists of epitopes and TCRs to expand discovery pipelines
Validate candidate TCRs’ potency and efficacy before proceeding with downstream development