Protein Biomarkers for Immune Assessment and Prediction of Transplant Rejection

Background

Current diagnostic methods of renal allograft rejection are neither sensitive, nor specific. Needle biopsies are invasive and associated with patient morbidity. It is thus desirable to develop noninvasive tests to predict and diagnose rejection.

Innovation

UCLA researchers have identified a number of proteins present in human plasma associated with transplant rejection. In a study that enrolled over 500 patients, Reed and coworkers utilized the Banff criteria to establish that 22 proteins were significantly associated with acute allograft rejection. Two of these were positively identified as α-1 anti-chymotrypsin and Apo A1. Plasma concentrations of both protein levels were significantly lower at rejection, compared to post-rejection. Current research is focused on determining the identity of the remaining proteins.

Applications

• Predict the propensity for a patient to reject a kidney transplantation
• Rapidly determine whether a kidney transplant patient is rejecting the donor organ

Advantages

• Much less invasive than needle biopsy
• A plasma sample is all that is needed to determine the presence of the biomarkers

Patent Status

Related Materials

• Ziegler ME, Chen T, LeBlanc JF, Wei X, Gjertson DW, Li KC, Khalighi MA, Lassman CR, Veale JL, Gritsch HA, Reed EF. Apolipoprotein A1 and C-terminal fragment of a-1 antichymotrypsin are candidate plasma biomarkers associated with acute renal allograft rejection. Transplantation. 2011 Aug 27;92(4):388-95.