Plasma Metabolomic Biomarkers for Detecting Heart Allograft Acute Rejection: A Pilot Study

Purpose: Heart transplantation (HTx) is a life-saving procedure for end-stage heart failure, but acute cellular rejection (ACR) affects 20-30% of recipients in the first 3 months post-HTx. Current ACR diagnosis via endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) is costly and invasive. Our goal is to develop a tool to quickly identify ACR in an accurate, cost-effective, and non-invasive manner, allowing for long-term monitoring of HTx recipients. We chose an untargeted metabolomics approach using mass spectrometry to discover a diagnoistic biomarker panel, aiming to improve the performance of a clinical assay in either or both sensitivity and specificity, and to permit ease of deployment as a fully quantitative and simple clinical assay.
Source: The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation - Category: Transplant Surgery Authors: Source Type: research