Antibody mRNA-seq repertoire sequencing to study relapses after B-cell depletion therapy

Rituximab (RTX) is widely used as a first-line therapeutic strategy for patients affected by immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). However, a large proportion of patients relapse after successful treatment. The present NGS assay was done to help find the cause for this relapse on the immune repertoire level. Therefore, we performed antibody repertoire sequencing for three RTX relapse patients with subsequent mutation and clonal analysis, as well as for two patients with ongoing ITP and two healthy donors (HD) with subsequent mutation analysis.