PATCRdb: Database of TCRs from data mining patent documents

T-cells are crucial actuators of the innate immune system. Because their receptors recognize intracellular disease markers, there is considerable interest in developing them as novel biotherapies. Computational methods to support discovery, design and development of TCR-based therapeutics need robust repositories of curated sequence and structural information on TCRs. The urgency of this need is highlighted by the recent approval of the first TCR biotherapeutic, tebentafusp. In this work, we have collected patent data on TCR sequences to provide early access to TCRs that are in various stages of product and clinical development (pre-FDA approvals) and are already past the initial discovery / proof of concept (scientific publications) stages. We employ literature mining to identify patent documents disclosing TCR sequences. Such documents are further analyzed to provide a birds-eye view of TCR patenting landscape. We compile the information into a database available athttp://github.com/konradkrawczyk/patcrdbthat we hope should help TCR engineers.