Blood Protein Levels Indicate Transplant Rejection

A simple, inexpensive blood test could soon help doctors halt organ rejection before it impairs transplanted hearts and kidneys.

Three easily measured proteins were identified that rise in the blood during acute rejection, in which a patient's immune system attacks his or her transplanted organ.

The new blood test will let doctors skip directly to drug dosing before the transplant is damaged. As well as treating rejection early, doctors could use the test to reduce doses of immune-suppressing drugs for patients whose bodies are handling their transplanted organs well, thus reducing unnecessary drug side effects.

A Stanford University School of Medicine (Stanford, CA, USA) team identified the three proteins that indicate kidney and heart transplant rejection. The team's findings were published online on September 23, 2010, in PLoS-Computational Biology. The protein signals are now also being validated in liver- and lung-transplant recipients.

"In the past, we couldn't spot rejection episodes until they harmed the organ,” said Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medical informatics and of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and director of the Center for Pediatric Bioinformatics at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (Stanford, CA, USA). "Our goal is to develop blood tests that will keep transplanted organs functioning so that patients can avoid a second transplant.”

Currently, an invasive, expensive, slow system is used to monitor transplants. Organ recipients receive functional monitoring of their new body parts. If organ function drops, doctors cut a tiny sample from the transplanted tissue to check for rejection, and then adjust the patient's immune-suppressing drugs accordingly.

Related Links:
Stanford University School of Medicine
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital