Immune profiling and immune monitoring for organ transplantation

Abstract

It is practicable to extract immunologically high-risk cases, which may be at risk of rejection or infection with uniform immunosuppressive therapy, on the basis of genomic information of immune function molecules, and to apply focused personalized immunosuppressive therapy by immune-monitoring. Therefore, we comprehensively analyzed the candidate gene polymorphisms of immune-related molecules associated with organ transplantation outcomes. Among them, we found that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of FcγR genes FCGR2A (rs 1801274) [131 H/R] and FCGR3A (rs396991) [158 F/V] were significantly associated with the onset and causative organisms of sepsis in liver transplant recipients and urinary tract infection in kidney transplant recipients, and that SNP of FOXP 3 promoter region (rs3761547) [33499 A/G] was associated with sensitivity of liver transplant recipients to pulsed steroid therapy, which is used to treat acute rejection. We performed a mixed lymphocyte reaction assay using carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFSE) cytoplasmic staining and multiparameter flow cytometry to minimize immunosuppressive therapy in the recipients with risk factors to optimize the dosage of immunosuppressive drugs by fine tuning based on immune-monitoring.