Clonal deletion using total lymphoid irradiation with no maintenance immunosuppression in renal allograft recipients.

ABSTRACT

A total of 69 individuals received a kidney from a living donor after a TLI-based clonal deletion protocol with no post-transplant maintenance immunosuppression planned. If needed, immunosuppression was started on a patient-specific basis, adding one drug at a time, a strategy we AWN". call "Drugs Added When Needed," or "DAWN. Following this strategy, at last follow-up 40 of the 69 patients (58%) had to be rescued by conventional immunosuppression, 23 (33%) had to be started on daily prednisone and six (9%) remained with no maintenance immunosuppression. The overall rate of de novo donor-specific antibody produced was 36% (in 25 of the 69 patients), and mean time to detection was about four months. The incidence of acute rejection episodes that displayed humoral components was 27% (19 cases), of which 14 were pure antibody-mediated rejection, five combined antibody- and T-cell-mediated rejection, and six were episodes (9%) of pure T-cell-mediated rejection. Finally, this study shows that although complete clonal deletion was not achieved, an important proportion of patients--42%, or 29 of the original 69--could be maintained with prednisone alone or even with no immunosuppression for a total mean follow-up of 13.3 months. Moreover, 16 patients with recent follow-up are surviving with no maintenance immunosuppression or just on prednisone. The mean serum creatinine at last follow-up for these 16 patients is 1.33 +/- 0.2 mg/dL with a mean follow-up of 19.3 months. Clonal deletion can be used to transplant patients without maintenance immunosuppression, adding drugs only as needed.