Impact of pre-transplant biopsy on 5-year outcomes of expanded criteria donor kidney transplantation

Metabolomic and lipidomic landscape of porcine kidney associated with kidney perfusion in heart beating donors and donors after cardiac death

Transplant centers are currently facing a lack of tools to ensure adequate evaluation of the quality of the available organs, as well as a significant shortage of kidney donors. Therefore, efforts are being made to facilitate the effective use of available organs and expand the donor pool, particularly with expanded criteria donors. Fulfilling a need, we aim to present an innovative analytical method based on solid-phase microextraction (SPME) - chemical biopsy. In order to track changes affecting the organ throughout the entire transplant procedure, porcine kidneys were subjected to multiple samplings at various time points. The application of small-diameter SPME probes assured the minimal invasiveness of the procedure. Porcine model kidney autotransplantation was executed for the purpose of simulating two types of donor scenarios: donors with a beating heart (HBD) and donors after cardiac death (DCD). All renal grafts were exposed to continuous normothermic ex vivo perfusion. Following metabolomic and lipidomic profiling using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometer, we observed differences in the profiles of HBD and DCD kidneys. The alterations were predominantly related to energy and glucose metabolism, and differences in the levels of essential amino acids, purine nucleosides, lysophosphocholines, phosphoethanolamines, and triacylglycerols were noticed. Our results indicate the potential of implementing chemical biopsy in the evaluation of graft quality and monitoring of renal function during perfusion.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and effects on tendon tissue: A vibrational spectroscopy study

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is an invasive medical technique used to provide life support in persons with insufficient cardiac and respiratory functionalities, or to preserve, postmortem, and organ function addressing organ/tissue transplant. Although a lot of information is available about organs in their entirety, the safety and effectiveness of allogeneic tissues collected from ECMO donors have not been fully elucidated. In this preliminary study, samples of tibial and peroneal human tendons were analyzed along their length with Raman microspectroscopy and attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared micro-imaging. Both techniques evidenced a different chemical composition in the terminal with respect to the central part of the tendon. Thus, a differentiated analysis was performed depending on the specific position with respect to the bone or the muscle junctions. Spectroscopic analyses showed significant differences in the characteristics of the extracellular matrix between tendons from ECMO and non-ECMO donors, suggesting changes in the amino acid (proline and hydroxyproline) content and protein structure.

A Review of Current and Emerging Trends in Donor Graft-Quality Assessment Techniques

The number of patients placed on kidney transplant waiting lists is rapidly increasing, resulting in a growing gap between organ demand and the availability of kidneys for transplantation. This organ shortage has forced medical professionals to utilize marginal kidneys from expanded criteria donors (ECD) to broaden the donor pool and shorten wait times for patients with end-stage renal disease. However, recipients of ECD kidney grafts tend to have worse outcomes compared to those receiving organs from standard criteria donors (SCD), specifically increased risks of delayed graft function (DGF) and primary nonfunction incidence. Thus, representative methods for graft-quality assessment are strongly needed, especially for ECDs. Currently, graft-quality evaluation is limited to interpreting the donor’s recent laboratory tests, clinical risk scores, the visual evaluation of the organ, and, in some cases, a biopsy and perfusion parameters. The last few years have seen the emergence of many new technologies designed to examine organ function, including new imaging techniques, transcriptomics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and new solutions in organ perfusion, which has enabled a deeper understanding of the complex mechanisms associated with ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI), inflammatory process, and graft rejection. This review summarizes and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of current conventional diagnostic methods and a wide range of new potential strategies (from the last five years) with respect to donor graft-quality assessment, the identification of IRI, perfusion control, and the prediction of DGF.

Advantages of Using a Web-based Digital Platform for Kidney Preimplantation Biopsies

Background:

In the setting of kidney transplantation, histopathology of kidney biopsies is a key element in the organ assessment and allocation. Despite the broad diffusion of the Remuzzi–Karpinski score on preimplantation kidney biopsies, scientific evidence of its correlation to the transplantation outcome is controversial. The main issues affecting the prognostic value of histopathology are the referral to general on-call pathologists and the semiquantitative feature of the score, which can raise issues of interpretation. Digital pathology has shown very reliable and effective in the oncological diagnosis and treatment; however, the spread of such technologies is lagging behind in the field of transplantation. The aim of our study was to create a digital online platform where whole-slide images (WSI) of preimplantation kidney biopsies could be uploaded and stored.

Methods:

We included 210 kidney biopsies collected between January 2015 and December 2019 from the joint collaboration of the transplantation centers of Padua and Verona. The selected slides, stained with hematoxylin and eosin, were digitized and uploaded on a shared web platform. For each case, the on-call pathologists' Remuzzi grades were obtained from the original report, together with the clinical data and the posttransplantation follow-up.

Results:

The storage of WSI of preimplantation kidney biopsies would have several clinical, scientific, and educational advantages. The clinical utility relies on the possibility to consult online expert pathologists and real-time quality checks of diagnosis. From the perspective of follow-up, the archived digitized biopsies can offer a useful comparison to posttransplantation biopsies. In addition, the digital online platform is a precious tool for multidisciplinary meetings aimed both at the clinical discussion and at the design of research projects. Furthermore, this archive of readily available WSI is an important educational resource for the training of professionals.

Conclusions:

Finally, the web platform lays the foundation for the introduction of artificial intelligence in the field of transplantation that would help create new diagnostic algorithms and tools with the final aim of increasing the precision of organ assessment and its predictive value for transplant outcome.