Chemical features of blood-borne TRG CDR3s associated with an increased overall survival in breast cancer.

PURPOSE Immunogenomics and earlier, pioneering studies, particularly by Whiteside and colleagues, have indicated a positive role for B-cells in breast cancer, as well as a positive role for gamma-delta T-cells. However, these studies have been completely limited to assessing breast cancer tumor tissue. METHODS AND RESULTS Our analyses here has shown that blood-borne T-cell receptor gamma (TRG) chain sequences were associated with greater overall survival, of particular note due to the comparative longevity of primary breast cancer patients, whereby assessments of disease-free, but rarely overall survival parameters are possible. Additional immunogenomics approaches narrowed the overall survival correlations to specific, TRG complementarity determining region-3, amino acid (AA) sequence chemical features, independently of many common, confounding variables in the breast cancer setting, such as estrogen or progesterone receptor status. CONCLUSIONS These results are discussed in the context of patient age and with regard to potential antigenic targets, based on the chemistry of the TRG CDR3 AA sequences associated with the higher survival rates.