Application of immune repertoire sequencing in cancer immunotherapy

With the prominent breakthrough in the field of tumor immunology, diverse cancer immunotherapies have attracted great attention in the last decade. The immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive cell therapies, and therapeutic cancer vaccines have already achieved impressive clinical success. However, the fact that only a small subset of patients with specific tumor types can benefit from these treatments limits the application of cancer immunotherapy. To seek out the molecular mechanisms behind this challenge and to select cancer precision medicine for different individuals, researchers apply the immune repertoire sequencing (IRS) to evaluate genetic responses of each patient to current immunotherapies. This review summarizes the technical advances and recent applications of IRS in cancer immunotherapy, indicates the limitations of this technique, and predicts future perspectives both in basic studies and clinical trials.