EXTRACELLULAR DNA IN PLASMA: from marking to dissecting the cell biology of cardiac transplants

Practitioners of transplantation have always hungered for better ways of detecting rejection. Searching "new marker of transplant rejection" retrieves 850 papers published since 19791, some of which are cited in recent reviews (1-3). That the quest for markers continues suggests no one marker or set of markers yet discovered optimizes management and/or predicts the outcome of transplantation (4). It also suggests a "new marker" reported in these pages is unlikely to end the quest. Why then should this paper from Agbor-Enoh and colleagues (5) concerning use of cell free DNA (cfDNA) as a biomarker of rejection in xenografts receive the enthusiastic embrace of reviewers and editors of JHLT? The answer is not the novelty of the assay, as application of cfDNA has been previously reported in 10 clinical trials (2, 6), including cardiac and lung transplantation.
Source: The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation - Category: Transplant Surgery Authors: Tags: Editorial Source Type: research