Predicting Acute Cardiac Allograft Rejection Using Donor and Recipient Gene Expression

Acute rejection in cardiac transplant patients is still a contributing factor to limited survival of the implanted heart. Currently there are no biomarkers in clinical use that can predict, at the time of transplantation, the likelihood of post-transplantation acute rejection, which would be of great importance for personalizing immunosuppressive treatment. Within the Biomarkers in Transplantation initiative, the predictive biomarker discovery focused on data and samples collected before or during transplantation such as: clinical variables, genes and proteins from the recipient, and genes from the donor. Based on this study, the best predictive biomarker panel contains genes from the recipient whole blood and from donor endomyocardial tissue and has an estimated area under the curve of 0.90. This biomarker panel provides clinically relevant prediction power and may help personalize immunosuppressive treatment and frequency of rejection monitoring.

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Hollander Z, Chen V, Sidhu K, Lin D, Ng RT, Balshaw R, Cohen-Freue GV, Ignaszewski A, Imai C, Kaan A, Tebbutt SJ, Wilson-McManus JE, McMaster RW, Keown PA, McManus BM, NCE CECR PROOF Centre of Excellence.