The Clinical Relevance of the Infiltrating Immune Cell Composition in Kidney Transplant Rejection

What is it about?

In kidney transplants, it is important to understand how the immune system affects the outcome of the transplant as the body's immune system can attack the new kidney leading to rejection. However, it is difficult to figure out how different types of immune cells relate to different types of rejection. We studied this by estimating the proportion of different immune cell populations in kidney transplant biopsies and found that certain immune cells, like CD8+ T cells and Natural Killer cells, were more common in kidneys that were being rejected. However, as we observed lots of heterogeneity in the immune response across the different biopsies, we concluded that no rejection type was clearly linked to a specific profile of immune cells. We also discovered that a specific type of CD8+ T cell, called CD8temra cells, was always linked to the transplant failing, regardless of the type of rejection. This suggests that targeting these CD8temra cells could help improve transplant outcomes.

Featured Image