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Identification of a peripheral blood transcriptional biomarker panel associated with operational renal allograft tolerance.

ABSTRACT: Long-term allograft survival generally requires lifelong immunosuppression (IS). Rarely, recipients display spontaneous "operational tolerance" with stable graft function in the absence of IS. The lack of biological markers of this phenomenon precludes identification of potentially tolerant patients in which IS could be tapered and hinders the development of new tolerance-inducing strategies. The objective of this study was to identify minimally invasive blood biomarkers for operational tolerance and use these biomarkers to determine the frequency of this state in immunosuppressed patients with stable graft function. Blood gene expression profiles from 75 renal-transplant patient cohorts (operational tolerance/acute and chronic rejection/stable graft function on IS) and 16 healthy individuals were analyzed. A subset of samples was used for microarray analysis where three-class comparison of the different groups of patients identified a "tolerant footprint" of 49 genes. These biomarkers were applied for prediction of operational tolerance by microarray and real-time PCR in independent test groups. Thirty-three of 49 genes correctly segregated tolerance and chronic rejection phenotypes with 99% and 86% specificity. The signature is shared with 1 of 12 and 5 of 10 stable patients on triple IS and low-dose steroid monotherapy, respectively. The gene signature suggests a pattern of reduced costimulatory signaling, immune quiescence, apoptosis, and memory T cell responses. This study identifies in the blood of kidney recipients a set of genes associated with operational tolerance that may have utility as a minimally invasive monitoring tool for guiding IS titration. Further validation of this tool for safe IS minimization in prospective clinical trials is warranted.

SUBMITTER: Brouard S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2000539 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Long-term allograft survival generally requires lifelong immunosuppression. Rarely, recipients display spontaneous operational tolerance with stable graft function in the absence of immunosuppression. The lack of biological markers of this phenomenon precludes identification of potentially tolerant patients in which immunosuppression could be tapered and hinders the development of new tolerance inducing strategies. The objective of this study was to identify minimally invasive blood biomarkers for operational tolerance and utilize these biomarkers to determine the frequency of this state in immunosupressed patients with stable graft function. Blood gene expression profiles from 75 renal transplant patient cohorts (operational tolerance/acute and chronic rejection/stable graft function on immunosuppression) and 16 healthy individuals were analyzed. A subset of samples was used for microarray analysis where three-class comparison of the different groups of patients identified a tolerant footprint of 49 genes. These biomarkers were applied for prediction of operational tolerance by microarray and real-time PCR in independent test-groups. 33/49 genes correctly segregated tolerance and chronic rejection phenotypes with 99% and 86% specificity. The signature is shared with 1/12 and 5/10 stable patients on triple immunosuppression and low dose steroid monotherapy respectively. The gene signature suggests a pattern of reduced co-stimulatory signaling, immune quiescence, apoptosis and memory T cell responses. This study identifies in the blood of kidney recipients a set of genes associated with operational tolerance that may have utility as a minimally-invasive monitoring tool for guiding immunosuppression titration. Further validation of this tool for safe immunosuppression minimization in prospective clinical trials is warranted. 67 samples were analyzed, no replicates included: 1. TOL (n = 12). patients with long-term stable graft function, without immunosuppression for at least 2 years 2. MIS (n = 10). Patients with stable graft function on steroid monotherapy (<10 mg/day) for 4.6. Calcineurin inhibitors and CellCept were removed in these patients because of previous posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease (n = 6), cancer (n = 2), or uncontrolled infectious disease (n = 2). 3. STA (n = 12). Patients with stable kidney graft function at >5 years posttransplantation while under mycophenolate mofetil or azathioprine and maintenance steroids with (n = 5) or without (n = 7) an associated calcineurin inhibitor. 4. AR (n = 14). Patients experiencing rapid decline (>20% from baseline) in graft function and biopsy-proven AR. 5. CR (n = 11). Patients having a progressive degradation of their renal function (creatinine clearance of <60 ml per min per 1.73 m2 and/or proteinuria of >1.5 g/day) and histological signs CR. 6. N (n = 8). These subjects all had normal blood formulae and no infectious or other concomitant pathology for at least 6 months before the study.

Project description:Acute rejection (AR) is closely associated with renal allograft dysfunction. Here, we utilised RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) and bioinformatic methods to characterise the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with acute renal allograft rejection. Pretransplant blood samples were collected from 32 kidney allograft donors and 42 corresponding recipients with biopsies classified as T cell-mediated rejection (TCMR, n = 18), antibody-mediated rejection (ABMR, n = 5), and normal/non-specific changes (non-AR, n = 19). The patients with TCMR and ABMR were assigned to the AR group, and the patients with normal/non-specific changes (n = 19) were assigned to the non-AR group. We analysed RNA-Seq data for identifying differentially expressed genes (DEGs), and then gene ontology (GO) analysis, Reactome, and ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA), protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and cell-type enrichment analysis were utilised for bioinformatics analysis. We identified DEGs in the PBMCs of the non-AR group when compared with the AR, ABMR, and TCMR groups. Pathway and GO analysis showed significant inflammatory responses, complement activation, interleukin-10 (IL-10) signalling pathways, classical antibody-mediated complement activation pathways, etc., which were significantly enriched in the DEGs. PPI analysis showed that IL-10, VEGFA, CXCL8, MMP9, and several histone-related genes were the hub genes with the highest degree scores. Moreover, IPA analysis showed that several proinflammatory pathways were upregulated, whereas antiinflammatory pathways were downregulated. The combination of NFSF14+TANK+ANKRD 33 B +HSPA1B was able to discriminate between AR and non-AR with an AUC of 92.3% (95% CI 82.8-100). Characterisation of PBMCs by RNA-Seq and bioinformatics analysis demonstrated gene signatures and biological pathways associated with AR. Our study may provide the foundation for the discovery of biomarkers and an in-depth understanding of acute renal allograft rejection.

Project description:Operational tolerance after solid organ transplantation is defined as stable graft acceptance without immunosuppression while maintaining normal immunocompetence against immunological insults. However, it is not clear yet which cellular and molecular pathways are driving tolerance in these patients and how this state can be induced in order to improve graft survival. Several transcriptomic analysis have shown that transcription signatures in blood can reflect the immunological state associated with operational tolerance in kidney transplant. Nonetheless, epigenetic dynamics orchestrating these transcription signatures have not yet been studied. Here, we performed genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation of kidney transplant recipients with chronic rejection and operational tolerance. Our data showed that chronic rejection and operational tolerance recipients have differential DNA methylation in 2737 genes, indicating that each patient group has a specific epigenetic signature associated with transplant outcome. In addition, we observed that operational tolerance is associated with DNA demethylation in genes involved in immune function, including B cell activation (e.g. ST6GAL1, MS4A1 and MEF2C) and the Th17 differentiation program (e.g. LY9 and BATF), while in CR patients is mostly associated intracellular signaling and ubiquitination pathways. Finally, we used weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) to select the more defining epigenetic changes associated with operational tolerance. By this method, we select 12 genomic regions specifically hypomethylated (HIVEP2, HOMER1, UTRN, PTPRO, SP100 and JAZF1) or hypermethylated (EMZ8, EZR-AS, WDR20, NADSYN1, TBCD and MED17) in tolerant patients. Analysis of these genes in stable transplant recipients with immunosuppression showed that these patients have a similar methylation signature to operational tolerance recipients. Overall, these results demonstrate that DNA methylation in blood can mirror the immune status associated with kidney transplant outcome and provides a starting point for understanding the epigenetic mechanisms associated with operational tolerance.

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Identification of a peripheral blood transcriptional biomarker panel associated with operational renal allograft tolerance.

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