Director of Transplantation Centre, Director of the Nephrology Department, Head of Transplantation Laboratory, IKEM

Kidney transplant recipients maintaining a prolonged allograft survival in the absence of immunosuppressive drugs and without evidence of rejection are supposed to be exceptional. This phenomenon, called operational tolerance, has been a subject of ongoing research. Several specific transcripts including naïve B cell regulation have been identified in the peripheral blood of operationally tolerant kidney transplant recipients. The decrease in immature B cell-related transcripts in patients with immunosuppression was shown to be associated with acute rejection. Moreover  impaired maturation of plasma cells were identified in those patients as well. The expression of operational tolerance signatures is influenced by immunosuppression. Recently a new European consortium collected samples from newly identified 21 kidney transplant recipients.  

IPHYS Contact Person: Ivana Vaněčková, ivana.vaneckova@fgu.cas.cz