Rejection detection

Given the shortage of organs, it would be valuable to know which patients were likely to reject them and which of those rejected organs could be saved. Transplant researchers published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine that kidney transplant patients with increased levels of a genetic biomarker, Foxp3, are more likely to respond to preventative therapy for acute organ rejection. The results could lead to a noninvasive diagnostic method, as the messenger RNA expression of Foxp3 can be measured from a urine sample. This potentially could alleviate the need for difficult and dangerous organ biopsies.

Manikkam Suthanthiran, one of the authors of the study, told BioCentury the basis for the research was an earlier finding that PCR could be used to study the levels of gene expression from cells isolated from the urine of transplant patients. Suthanthiran is a professor of medicine and chief of nephrology and transplantation medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center...