INTRODUCING THE IGX PLATFORM TO THE AIRR COMMUNITY
From the 10th to the 15th of May, ENPICOM representatives, Lorenzo Fanchi, Dr. Henk-Jan van den Ham and Dr. Nicola Bonzanni introduced the IGX Platform to the AIRR Community at the 4th Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community Meeting (#AIRRC4) at Genova, Italy.
The AIRR Community is ‘a research-driven group that is organizing and coordinating stakeholders in the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to study antibody/B-cell and T-cell receptor repertoires’. The Community Meeting is a gathering of AIRR members from all over the globe, bringing together academic and corporate researchers to discuss the latest insights and challenges in adaptive immune receptor sequencing (aka TCR/BCR sequencing, repertoire sequencing, #repseq).
This meeting was also a first introduction of ENPICOM’s ImmunoGenomiX (IGX) platform to the AIRR community. Dr. Bonzanni, CSO, presented the IGX platform in a plenary talk that highlighted the unique approach of Clone Collections to the analysis of repertoire data. One well-received feature was the IGX platform’s intuitive interface to search for clones across multiple samples, which allows users without bioinformatics expertise to analyse their own data – a clear illustration how the IGX platform is ‘bridging the gap’ between new technology and life science researchers’ needs. Mr. Fanchi gave a plenary live (yes, live!) demo of the IGX platform to showcase some of its key features. Dr. van den Ham took several AIRR meeting attendants through an IGX platform tutorial that allowed users to interact with the platform on their own laptops.
In addition to presenting the IGX platform, the ENPICOM team spoke to many of the attendants during and around the meeting, participated in Working Groups, and discussed the future of repertoire sequencing in a variety of settings. The Meeting programme included great keynote and contributed talks, as well as Working Group meetings and panel discussions on developments in the repertoire sequencing field. Past AIRR Community meetings have resulted in the publication of data standards for repertoire sequencing (MiAIRR), and the initiation of the Immune Allele Review Committee (IARC) that works with the field’s IMGT database to curate new receptor germline sequences.
All in all, AIRR is a great community to be a part of, and we had a great time at #AIRRC4 in Genova. We look forward to #AIRRC5!
