Gene expression profiling in B lymphocytes from transplanted patients

The achievement of a drug-free operational tolerance for renal transplanted patients is a major goal in organ transplantation. Previous gene expression profiling in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) identified genes associated with operational tolerance. The identification of a common pattern of B cell-related genes associated with tolerance encourage us to analyze gene expression in purified B cell from operationally tolerant patients (TOL=10) compared to renal transplanted patients with stable graft function (STA=12) under immunosuppression and also compared to healthy volunteers (HV=10) who have no immunosuppressive treatment and no graft. Microarray analyses exhibited an absence of gene signature associated with tolerance in purified B cell compared to STA or HV. These results suggest that the B cell signatures observed in PBMC may be due to an increase number of total B cells rather than specific B cell characteristics in operationally tolerant patients. This dataset represents gene expression profiling of purified B cells from 10 renal transplanted patients with operational tolerance (TOL), 12 renal transplanted patients with stable graft function under immunosuppression (STA) and 10 healthy volunteers (HV).