Summary of work Only a small fraction of human T-cells recognize and destroy tumors. How do you separate the signals in these few T-cells from the rest? Parker Bridge Scholar Ansuman Satpathy, MD, PhD, PICI member Howard Chang, MD, PhD, co-director Mark Davis, PhD, and their colleagues teamed up to create a new method called T-ATAC-seq to analyze the underlying genetic mechanisms of single T-cells to identify which cells are most capable of killing a tumor. Why this is impactful to patients Understanding T-cell biology is fundamental to the development of more effective immunotherapy treatments. “T-ATAC-seq is a useful technology that will help us better characterize T-cells, the dynamics of their response to tumors and how their function changes in response to immunotherapy,” says Pier Federico Gherardini, PhD, associate director of technology development at the Parker Institute. With this method, scientists can “link the identity of a T-cell, defined by the unique sequence of its T-cell receptor (TCR), with the T-cell’s functional state or capacity, as revealed by its epigenomic profile.”