Skoltech researchers Mikhail Goncharov and Dmitry Chudakov have co-authored a paper “VDJdb in the pandemic era: a compendium of T cell receptors specific for SARS-CoV-2” that has been recently published in Nature Methods. The authors report the VDJdb database (https://vdjdb.cdr3.net) update prepared between 2019 and 2022, marked by the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. This database contains publicly available sequence data acquired from T cell receptor (TCRs) with defined antigen specificities. Then, the researchers incorporated TCR specificity data from various studies of COVID-19. They collected data from an international network of laboratories focused on assaying antigen-specific T cell responses in COVID-19. Data acquired from multiple laboratories across the world feature over 3,000 TCR α and β chain sequences recognizing dozens of SARS-CoV-2 epitopes. These analyses revealed a set of reproducible TCR motifs that could find utility in large-scale clinical and experimental studies focused on COVID-19. Moreover, the scientists showed consistency and reproducibility of TCR specificity data across laboratories. Full text of the paper is available here.