27 March 2017 - - US-based genomics platform provider 10x Genomics has launched the first high-throughput solution for profiling paired V(D)J transcripts from hundreds to millions of lymphocytes, the company said.

The ability to more completely identify and characterize the body's immune agents (T and B cells) at the single-cell level will impact our understanding and development of more effective and durable immunotherapies, including immuno-oncology drugs for targeted cancer therapy.

T and B cells generate the incredible diversity of heterodimeric cell surface and secreted antigen receptor genes through the somatic recombination of Variable (V), Diversity (D) and Joining (J) gene sequences.

Accurate characterization of this repertoire of paired T-cell receptor alpha and beta chain genes is critical to the characterisation of the interaction between antigens and T cells.

This understanding will enable and accelerate the ability of researchers to pursue next-generation studies into the true diversity of the paired T-cell and B-cell receptor repertoire.

Further, it will allow researchers to apply this understanding to areas such as vaccine development, clonal immune cell dynamics, immune responses to checkpoint blockades, and the development of recombinant antibodies and engineered T cells used in immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases.

The new V(D)J Solution expands the 10x Genomics industry-leading single cell analysis product portfolio, which also includes the Chromium Single Cell 3′ Solution for gene expression.

All of 10x Genomics' products for Single-Cell and Linked-Reads applications, including the Single Cell 3', V(D)J, Genome, Exome and de novo Assembly Solutions, can be run on their Chromium Controller which was launched last year.

A dedicated Chromium Single Cell Controller was also launched late last year for users that exclusively run the Chromium Single Cell 3′ and V(D)J Solutions.

The Chromium Single Cell V(D)J Solution has been optimized to provide a cost-effective application for the assembly of full V(D)J sequences --5' untranslated region to constant regions-- from short-read sequencing on a cell-by-cell basis.

Five-prime barcoding limits bias caused by complex multiplex PCR, enables the detection of germline and somatic variants across the entire V(D)J segment and supports cell type classification or phenotyping.

The comprehensive solution includes necessary chemistry and microfluidics consumables as well as a complete software suite for the rapid analysis and visualisation of large V(D)J datasets, designed for researchers without bioinformatics expertise.

The Cell Ranger pipeline leverages barcoding to perform gene expression analysis with single-cell resolution at m-cell scale. The Loupe for Cells visualisation application features powerful but easy-to-use clustering and differential expression analysis.