Longitudinal prospective and multicentric peripheral blood immune cell profiling of corneal transplant with acute rejection

This study evaluates the peripheral blood mononuclear cell transcriptomes of cornea transplant (CT) recipients from a prospective multi-center clinical study. 244 CT patients were recruited in 5 European clinical centers and biological samples were collected before and 6- and 12-months after the CT. Two groups of patients were recruited: 102 CT patients with a high risk of rejection and 142 with a low risk of rejection. The risk of rejection was defined according to consensus clinical features associated with higher or lower risk of rejection. The gene expression profiles from a total of 572 samples (277 high-risk and 296 low-risk) were generated using Affymetrix transcriptome-wide gene-level expression profiling microarray. To identify immunological biomarkers associated with the occurrence of acute rejection of CT, 244 CT patients were recruited in 5 European clinical centers and biological samples were collected before and during the 1st post-transplant year. Two groups of patients were recruited: 102 CT patients with a high risk of rejection and 142 with a low risk of rejection. The risk of rejection was defined according to consensus clinical features associated with higher or lower risk of rejection. Gender and age were equally distributed among the acute rejection and stable groups. Pre-existing systemic disease, clinical reason for CT, initial diagnosis in case of regraft, immunological event leading to regraft and the use of topical immunosuppressive drugs were equally distributed between CT patients who will later experience acute rejection. Microarray gene expression profiling was analyzed at each time point between samples with and without rejection separately for the high- and low-risk groups.