Molecular diagnosis of T cell-mediated rejection in human kidney transplant biopsies; Molecular diagnosis of antibody-mediated rejection in human kidney transplants

Histologic diagnosis of T cell-mediated rejection in kidney transplant biopsies has limited reproducibility because it is based on non-specific lesions using arbitrary rules that are subject to differing interpretations. We used microarray results from 403 indication biopsies previously given histologic diagnoses to develop a molecular classifier that assigned a molecular T cell-mediated rejection score to each biopsy. Independent assessment of the biopsies by multiple pathologists confirmed considerable disagreement on the presence of TCMR features: 79-88% accuracy and 35-69% sensitivity. The agreement of the molecular T cell-mediated rejection score with the histology diagnosis was similar to agreement among individual pathologists: accuracy 89%, sensitivity 51%. However, the score also predicted the consensus among pathologists, being highest when all agreed. Many discrepancies between the scores and the histologic diagnoses were in situations where histology is unreliable e.g. scarred biopsies. The score correlated with histologic lesions and gene sets associated with T cell-mediated rejection. The transcripts most often selected by the classifier were expressed in effector T cells, dendritic cells, or macrophages or inducible by interferon-gamma. Thus the T cell-mediated rejection score offers an objective assessment of kidney transplant biopsies, predicting the consensus opinion among multiple pathologists, and offering insights into underlying disease mechanisms.

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Reeve J, Sellarés J, Mengel M, Sis B, Skene A, Hidalgo L, de Freitas DG, Famulski KS, Halloran PF