It is now widely accepted that in order to improve long-term graft function and survival, a more personalized immunosuppressive treatment of transplant patients according to the individual anti-donor immune response status is needed. This applies to the identification of potentially "high-risk" patients likely to develop acute rejection episodes or display an accelerated decline of graft function, patients who might need immunosuppression intensification, and operationally tolerant patients suitable for immunosuppression minimization or weaning off. Such a patient stratification would benefit from biomarkers, which enable categorization into low and high risk or, ideally, identification of operational tolerant patients. Here, we report on recent developments regarding identification and performance analysis of noninvasive biomarkers such as mRNA and miRNA expression profiles, chemokines, or changes in immune cell subsets in either blood or urine of renal transplant patients. We will also discuss which future steps are needed to accelerate their clinical implementation.
Keywords:Biomarker r Immunosuppression r Rejection r Renal transplantation r Tolerance
Introduction: A need for immune monitoring in transplantationWith 1-year allograft survival reaching 90% and yet allograft halflife still being only approximately 10 years, renal transplantation is now facing new challenges; namely to improve long-term allograft outcomes [1,2]. Although physiological and age-related decline of graft function is irremediable and recurrence of initial renal disease difficult to prevent, uncontrolled immunological attack by the recipient's cells is the main contributor to late graft loss and should be therefore improved.Correspondence: Dr. Birgit Sawitzki e-mail: birgit.sawitzki@charite.deThe immune response toward allografts, like responses against other foreign antigens, involves the activation of antigen-reactive T cells and B cells. The main antigens priming the response against the transplanted organ are the donor, and thus foreign, MHC antigens, which elicit differentiation of, e.g. cytotoxic T cells and production of anti-MHC antibodies, also termed donor-specific antibodies (DSA). In conjunction with the activation of cells from the innate immune system or soluble factors such as complement, rejection can lead to the destruction of the transplanted organ (reviewed here: [3]). This rejection mechanism can be classified either as T-cell-mediated rejection (TCMR) when infiltration * These authors contributed equally to this work. Eur. J. Immunol. 2016. 46: 2695-2704 by the cellular compartment (i.e. T cells) predominates in renal graft biopsies, or as antibody-mediated rejection (ABMR) when the humoral response predominates, as observed in allograft glomerulopathy, and/or complement deposits in biopsy examination with serum-circulating DSA, as defined according the Banff classification [4]. In either case, impairment of renal allograft function (e.g. rise in serum creatinine) must be observed in order to diagnose a clinical r...