title: Establishment of a global virtual laboratory for transplantation: a symposium report.
abstract: Advancing the field of transplantation by developing improved and novel treatment strategies will require a detailed understanding of changes and adaptations of alloimmunity, both over the short-term and long-term. Presently, we rely on traditional measures that may not optimally reflect benefits of new treatments. Thus, collecting reliable basic information about changes of the immune response along the entire posttransplantation course will improve our understanding of how immune mechanisms evolve and guide the introduction of novel clinical approaches. The gathering of good quality data from transplant recipients in various clinical trials will require immune monitoring that is reliable and comparable so that large sets of information from individual trials can be confidently analyzed to reach rigorous conclusions. A uniform standard of testing is thus a prerequisite toward this goal. Based on the assumption that the transplantation community will in general be supportive of this concept, this meeting proposed establishing a global virtual laboratory as a means of developing and disseminating detailed and rigorous protocols for the monitoring of alloimmune responses.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Surgery, Section of Experimental Surgery, University Hospital Regensburg, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany. 2 Division of Transplant Surgery and Transplant Surgery Research Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. 3 Department of Surgery, Section of Transplantation, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
authors.forename: Edward K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Geissler
authors.forename: Stefan G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Tullius
authors.forename: Anita S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Chong
mesh_terms: D000486:Allergy and Immunology / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D032921:Consensus; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D007518:Isoantibodies / Q000032:analysis; D007519:Isoantigens / Q000032:analysis; D007753:Laboratories / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D015166:Monitoring, Immunologic / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D016377:Organ Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000592:standards*; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D016896:Treatment Outcome
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D007518:Isoantibodies; D007519:Isoantigens