{"ID":2888818,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22710","arxiv_id":"2507.22710","title":"Enhanced Prediction of CAR T-Cell Cytotoxicity with Quantum-Kernel Methods","abstract":"Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells are T-cells engineered to recognize and kill specific tumor cells. Through their extracellular domains, CAR T-cells bind tumor cell antigens which triggers CAR T activation and proliferation. These processes are regulated by co-stimulatory domains present in the intracellular region of the CAR T-cell. Through integrating novel signaling components into the co-stimulatory domains, it is possible to modify CAR T-cell phenotype. Identifying and experimentally testing new CAR constructs based on libraries of co-stimulatory domains is nontrivial given the vast combinatorial space defined by such libraries. This leads to a highly data constrained, poorly explored combinatorial problem, where the experiments undersample all possible combinations. We propose a quantum approach using a Projected Quantum Kernel (PQK) to address this challenge. PQK operates by embedding classical data into a high dimensional Hilbert space and employs a kernel method to measure sample similarity. Using 61 qubits on a gate-based quantum computer, we demonstrate the largest PQK application to date and an enhancement in the classification performance over purely classical machine learning methods for CAR T cytotoxicity prediction. Importantly, we show improved learning for specific signaling domains and domain positions, particularly where there was lower information highlighting the potential for quantum computing in data-constrained problems.","short_abstract":"Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells are T-cells engineered to recognize and kill specific tumor cells. Through their extracellular domains, CAR T-cells bind tumor cell antigens which triggers CAR T activation and proliferation. These processes are regulated by co-stimulatory domains present in the intracellular reg...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22710","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.22710v1","authors":"[\"Filippo Utro\",\"Meltem Tolunay\",\"Kahn Rhrissorrakrai\",\"Tanvi P. Gujarati\",\"Jie Shi\",\"Sara Capponi\",\"Mirko Amico\",\"Nate Earnest-Noble\",\"Laxmi Parida\"]","published":"2025-07-30T14:21:32Z","proceeding":"cs.LG","tasks":"[\"cs.LG\",\"q-bio.QM\",\"quant-ph\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}