Antibody-mediated rejection--an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The presence of preformed, donor-specific alloantibodies inpatients undergoing renal transplantation is associated with a high risk of hyperacute and acute antibody-mediated rejection (ABMR), and often limits potential recipients' access to organs from living and deceased donors. Over the last decade, understanding of ABMR has improved markedly and given rise to numerous, diverse strategies for the transplantation of allosensitized recipients. Antibody desensitization programs have been developed to allow renal transplant recipients with a willing but antibody-incompatible living donor to undergo successful transplantation, whereas kidney paired exchange schemes circumvent the antibody incompatibility altogether by finding suitable pairs to donors and recipients.

The long form of CDK2 arises via alternative splicing and forms an active protein kinase with cyclins A and E.

We have reinvestigated the long form of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)2 that is expressed in many rodent cells. We show that the mRNA encoding CDK2L arises by alternative splicing and that the encoded protein can bind to, and be activated by, cyclins A and E. The complex of CDK2L with cyclin A has about half the specific activity of the equivalent CDK2-cyclin A complex.