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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2024.04.04.587695

TCR clustering by contrastive learning on antigen specificity.

Pertseva, M.·Follonier, O.·Scarcella, D.·Reddy, S. T.
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Abstract

Effective clustering of T-cell receptor (TCR) sequences could be used to predict their antigen-specificities. TCRs with highly dissimilar sequences can bind to the same antigen, thus making their clustering into a common antigen group a central challenge. Here, we develop TouCAN, a method that relies on contrastive learning and pre-trained protein language models to perform TCR sequence clustering and antigen-specificity predictions. Following training, TouCAN demonstrates the ability to cluster highly dissimilar TCRs into common antigen groups. Additionally, TouCAN demonstrates TCR clustering performance and antigen-specificity predictions comparable to other leading methods in the field.

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Pertseva, M., Follonier, O., Scarcella, D., Reddy, S. T.. 2024-04-06. TCR clustering by contrastive learning on antigen specificity.. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.04.587695

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