Circulating Donor Lung-specific Exosome Profiles Enable Noninvasive Monitoring of Acute Rejection in a Rodent Orthotopic Lung Transplantation Model.

Background: There is a critical need for development of biomarkers to noninvasively monitor for lung transplant rejection. We investigated the potential of circulating donor lung-specific exosome profiles for time-sensitive diagnosis of acute rejection in a rat orthotopic lung transplant model.

Methods: Left lungs from Wistar transgenic rats expressing human CD63-GFP, an exosome marker, were transplanted into fully MHC-mismatched Lewis recipients or syngeneic controls.