David Gennert

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Stanford University

Significance T cell exhaustion is a major barrier to cancer immunotherapy. T cell exhaustion is the state of T cell dysfunction after chronic stimulation, and recent studies indicate that exhaustion is epigenetically controlled and associated with unique chromatin profiles. This work reports the genome-wide map of active DNA regulatory elements and...

Dysfunction in T cells limits the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. We profiled the epigenome, transcriptome, and enhancer connectome of exhaustion-prone GD2-targeting HA-28z chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and control CD19-targeting CAR T cells, which present less exhaustion-inducing tonic signaling, at multiple points during their ex vivo...

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells mediate anti-tumour effects in a small subset of patients with cancer1,2,3, but dysfunction due to T cell exhaustion is an important barrier to progress4,5,6. To investigate the biology of exhaustion in human T cells expressing CAR receptors, we used a model system with a tonically signaling CAR, which induce...

CAR T cells mediate antitumor effects in a small subset of cancer patients, but dysfunction due to T cell exhaustion is an important barrier to progress. To investigate the biology of exhaustion in human T cells expressing CAR receptors, we used a model system employing a tonically signaling CAR, which induces hallmarks of exhaustion described in o...

Modular domains of long non-coding RNAs can serve as scaffolds to bring distant regions of the linear genome into spatial proximity. Here, we present HiChIRP, a method leveraging bio-orthogonal chemistry and optimized chromosome conformation capture conditions, which enables interrogation of chromatin architecture focused around a specific RNA of i...

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment of B cell leukemia. However, application of CAR T cell therapy in solid tumors has been disappointing. We believe the development of T cell exhaustion, a phenomenon well described in chronic viral infection, is a major barrier to widespread success of CAR T cell therapy...

T cells create vast amounts of diversity in the genes that encode their T cell receptors (TCRs), which enables individual clones to recognize specific peptide-major histocompatibility complex (MHC) ligands. Here we combined sequencing of the TCR-encoding genes with assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing (ATAC-seq) analysis at th...

For the past several decades, due to technical limitations, the field of transcriptomics has focused on population‐level measurements that can mask significant differences between individual cells. With the advent of single‐cell RNA‐Seq, it is now possible to profile the responses of individual cells at unprecedented depth and thereby uncover, tran...

This is aSingle-cell RNA-Seq expression analysisSupport Protocol forPreparation of Single-Cell RNA-Seq Libraries for Next Generation Sequencing.

For the past several decades, due to technical limitations, the field of transcriptomics has focused on population-level measurements that can mask significant differences between individual cells. With the advent of single-cell RNA-Seq, it is now possible to profile the responses of individual cells at unprecedented depth and thereby uncover, tran...

For the past several decades, due to technical limitations, the field of transcriptomics has focused on population‐level measurements that can mask significant differences between individual cells. With the advent of single‐cell RNA‐Seq, it is now possible to profile the responses of individual cells at unprecedented depth and thereby uncover, tran...

(Cell 166, 1500–1511; September 8, 2016) In our paper we have identified distinct gene modules for T cell activation and dysfunction that are uncoupled at the single-cell level in tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and shown that the zinc regulator proteins, metallothioneins (MT), promote T cell dysfunction. It has come to our attention that the single...

s: AACR Special Conference on Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy; October 20-23, 2016; Boston, MA Reversing the dysfunctional (also known as “exhausted”) T cell state that arises in cancer and chronic viral infections is the focus of therapeutic interventions; however, current therapies are effective in only some patients and for only some tumor t...

Although human tumours are shaped by the genetic evolution of cancer cells, evidence also suggests that they display hierarchies related to developmental pathways and epigenetic programs in which cancer stem cells (CSCs) can drive tumour growth and give rise to differentiated progeny. Yet, unbiased evidence for CSCs in solid human malignancies rema...

Reversing the dysfunctional T cell state that arises in cancer and chronic viral infections is the focus of therapeutic interventions; however, current therapies are effective in only some patients and some tumor types. To gain a deeper molecular understanding of the dysfunctional T cell state, we analyzed population and single-cell RNA profiles of...

Single-cell transcriptomics requires a method that is sensitive, accurate, and reproducible. Here, we present CEL-Seq2, a modified version of our CEL-Seq method, with threefold higher sensitivity, lower costs, and less hands-on time. We implemented CEL-Seq2 on Fluidigm’s C1 system, providing its first single-cell, on-chip barcoding method, and we d...

Spatial localization is a key determinant of cellular fate and behavior, but methods for spatially resolved, transcriptome-wide gene expression profiling across complex tissues are lacking. RNA staining methods assay only a small number of transcripts, whereas single-cell RNA-seq, which measures global gene expression, separates cells from their na...

Protein expression is regulated by the production and degradation of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and proteins, but their specific relationships remain unknown. We combine measurements of protein production and degradation and mRNA dynamics so as to build a quantitative genomic model of the differential regulation of gene expression in lipopolysaccharide...

Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) are capable of dynamic interconversion between distinct substates; however, the regulatory circuits specifying these states and enabling transitions between them are not well understood. Here we set out to characterize transcriptional heterogeneity in mouse PSCs by single-cell expression profiling under different chemi...

For the past several decades, due to technical limitations, the field of transcriptomics has focused on population-level measurements that can mask significant differences between individual cells. With the advent of single-cell RNA-Seq, it is now possible to profile the responses of individual cells at unprecedented depth and thereby uncover, tran...

High-throughput single-cell transcriptomics offers an unbiased approach for understanding the extent, basis and function of gene expression variation between seemingly identical cells. Here we sequence single-cell RNA-seq libraries prepared from over 1,700 primary mouse bone-marrow-derived dendritic cells spanning several experimental conditions. W...

Recent molecular studies have shown that, even when derived from a seemingly homogenous population, individual cells can exhibit substantial differences in gene expression, protein levels and phenotypic output, with important functional consequences. Existing studies of cellular heterogeneity, however, have typically measured only a few pre-selecte...

Despite their importance, the molecular circuits that control the differentiation of naive T cells remain largely unknown. Recent studies that reconstructed regulatory networks in mammalian cells have focused on short-term responses and relied on perturbation-based approaches that cannot be readily applied to primary T cells. Here we combine transc...