Whole blood gene expression from lung transplanted patients with chronic lung allograft dysfunction

Chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD) limits the long term survival after lung transplantation. CLAD is diagnosed late on the decline in lung function, when any immuno-intervention is ineffective. Identification of early forerunners of CLAD is therefore essential to prevent the progression of the disease before irreversible damages to the allograft. We used large-scale gene expression profiling of whole blood cells to identify early biomarkers of Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome (BOS), the main form of CLAD. Microarray experiments performed from 80 patients (40 stable (STA) and 40 BOS) identify 47 genes differentially expressed between STA and BOS recipients. An independent set of patients (13 STA, 11 BOS) was then used for external validation by qPCR. POU Class 2 Associating Factor 1 (POU2AF1), T-cell leukemia/lymphoma protein 1A (TCL1A) and B-cell lymphocyte kinase (BLK) genes were identified and validated as predictive markers of BOS more than 6 months before diagnosis with AUCs of 0.83, 0.77 and 0.78 respectively. These genes allow stratifying upon CLAD risk (log-rank test p<0.01) and could provide clinicians with new tools to improve follow-up and adapt treatment of patients likely to develop BOS. This dataset represents gene expression profiling of periphal blood samples collected in PAXgene from 80 patients (40 stable (STA) and 40 BOS) using Agilent SurePrint G3 Human Gene Expression v3 8x60K Microarrays.