In high-risk kidney transplant recipients, induction therapy with rabbit anti-human thymocyte globulin (RATG) reduces the risk for acute rejection but is associated with significant toxicity, opportunistic infections, and cancer. Using reduced doses of RATG combined with anti-IL-2 antibodies may achieve the same antirejection activity of standard-dose RATG but with a better safety profile. This...

UNLABELLED Antibodies against donor's HLA antigens and B cell activity are recognized modulators of immune response to allograft. The role of both anti-HLA and non-HLA antibodies is understood in solid organ transplantation, but has not been addressed in composite tissue allografts. AIM We decided to evaluate the presence and role of anti-HLA and non-HLA antibodies after hand transplantation....

BACKGROUND The therapeutic efficacy of horse antilymphocyte globulins (ALG) or of rabbit antithymocyte globulins (ATG), used for both the prevention and treatment of allograft rejection has been well documented. However, clinical use of these heterologous antibodies can result in the production of antibodies against horse or rabbit proteins and in the development of serum sickness via circulati...

Hyperglycemia and increased insulin requirements are indicators of ongoing islet allograft rejection, but there are no methods to predict or confirm rejection. Elevation of cytotoxic lymphocyte (CL) gene expression in peripheral blood (PB) has been correlated with renal allograft rejection in humans, but no published study has assessed the utility of monitoring these markers as predictors of re...

This antitumor effect of sorafenib is considered to be dependent not only on its direct cytotoxicity to cancer cells but also due to the inhibition of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs). Recently, a novel antibody against cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4), which activates lymphocytes, is currently in clinical applications. The aim of the present study was to investigate the synerg...

Hyperglycemia and increased insulin requirements are indicators of ongoing islet allograft rejection, but there are no methods to predict or confirm rejection. Elevation of cytotoxic lymphocyte (CL) gene expression in peripheral blood (PB) has been correlated with renal allograft rejection in humans, but no published study has assessed the utility of monitoring these markers as predictors of re...

Immune prophylaxis and treatment of transplanted tissue rejection act indiscriminately, risking serious infections and malignancies. Although animal data suggest that cellular immune responses causing rejection may be rather narrow and predictable based on genetic background, there are only limited data regarding the clonal breadth of anti-donor responses in humans after allogeneic organ transp...

Because ex vivo rapamycin generates murine Th2 cells that prevent Graft-versus-host disease more potently than control Th2 cells, we hypothesized that rapamycin would generate Th2/Tc2 cells (Th2/Tc2.R cells) that abrogate fully MHC-disparate hemopoietic stem cell rejection more effectively than control Th2/Tc2 cells. In a B6-into-BALB/c graft rejection model, donor Th2/Tc2.R cells were indeed e...

To assess the usefulness of flowcytometric monitoring in the early detection of acute allograft rejection, we studied surface markers of graft infiltrating lymphocytes, coronary sinus blood lymphocytes and peripheral blood lymphocytes after rat heart transplantation. Fisher rats served as donors and Lewis rats as recipients. Among recipients that received no immunosuppression, grafts were remov...

Editorial Integrative gene-expression analysis applied to the study of human samples has defined shared themes invariably associated with immune-mediated tissue destruction. Such themes define an in situ T helper 1 (Th-1)-like immune response characterized by the coordinate expression of interferon-γ (IFN-γ)/interferon regulatory factor-1 (IRF-1)-induced transcripts, mRNA's encoding CXCR3/CCR5 ...