New biomarkers in kidney transplant

Recently, new interesting and important novel biomarkers have allowed the evidence based medicine to move to a new field called precision medicine. In particular, this apply to organ transplantation and to the diagnosis of rejection. Among these novel biomarkers are the study of donor-derived cell-free DNA when present in the blood of the recipients, the study of gene expression profiling again in the recipient, and the study of several urinary cytokines. All these novel biomarkers have several advantages over the old biomarkers. Indeed, they are non-invasive, are able to detect renal damage before the appearance of histological abnormalities, and are able to distinguish antibody-mediated rejection from cell-mediated rejection. The aim of this study is to identify the most recent findings on these biomarkers and to describe their utility and their limitations in particular in the field of kidney acute rejection.