Functional Immune Tolerance Induced By Sequential Hematopoietic Stem Cell-Solid Organ Transplantation

Solid organ transplantation (SOT) treats over 1500 children/year in the US. While short-term outcomes have improved, long-term outcomes still remain poor. With the rare exception of monozygotic twins as donors, recipients require lifelong immunosuppression with its accompanying toxicities, the risk of nonadherence, and chronic rejection. Further, up to half of recipients require a second transplant.

We have pioneered translational approaches that abrogate rejection and the need for post-transplant immunosuppression. Previous attempts in adult patients utilizing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) to eliminate the need for post-SOT immunosuppression in non-histocompatible kidney transplant (KT) recipients have failed(Lowsky R, BMT 2019). The establishment of mixed lymphoid chimerism has permitted a reduction in the number of immunosuppressive drugs needed, but not their discontinuation, whereas complete donor engraftment after HSCT has resulted in fatal graft-versus-host disease in some patients (Leventhal JR, Eur J Pediatr 2000). The use of HSCT to eliminate the need for immunosuppression following pediatric KT has not been evaluated. We have pioneered sequential haploidentical HSCT followed by KT in three patients with Schimke immuno-osseous dysplasia (SIOD) to abrogate kidney rejection and the need for post-transplant immunosuppression.

SIOD is a monogenic disorder with progressive nephropathy correctable by KT and a T-cell immunodeficiency curable by HSCT. All three patients received αβT-cell/CD19 B-cell depleted HSCT (αβhaplo-HSCT) from a parent prior to a KT from the same parental donor. The pre-HSCT reduced intensity preparative regimen consisted of fludarabine (a starting dose of 1 mg/kg x 4 days, which was adjusted based on AUC), total body irradiation (TBI) 200 cGy, cyclophosphamide 1200 mg/m ², anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) thymoglobulin® 7.5 mg/kg, and rituximab 200 mg/m ². Immunosuppressive drugs were not prophylactically administered after HSCT. After confirmation of full donor lymphoid chimerism post-HSCT, the patients received a living donor KT from their parental HSCT donor. Post-KT immunosuppression included intraoperative methylprednisolone and post-operative low-dose oral prednisone (0.5 mg/kg/day with taper) and tacrolimus (target serum level of 3-5 ng/ml) to reduce potential reperfusion inflammation. All immunosuppressive drugs were tapered off by Day +30 post-KT. To demonstrate functional tolerance after KT, Mixed Lymphocyte Cultures (MLC) were performed between peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and patient/parent-derived irradiated EBV transformed lymphoblastoid cells lines (EBV-LCL) as stimulators (Figure 1). PBMC were isolated from SIOD patients (n=3) by Ficoll Hypaque separation and were labelled with Invitrogen™ CellTrace Violet Proliferation Kit (CTV). EBV-LCL were established from SIOD patients, parents and healthy donors. The assay was performed in round bottom microtiter plates with 100,000 labelled PBMC as responder cells (R) and 50,000 irradiated (30gy) EBV-LCL in RPMI medium with 10% fetal calf serum. Cells were harvested on Day 6, and T-cell proliferation determined by CTV expression of CD3+ T cells using a Novocyte Penteon flow cytometer (Agilent).

Donor-derived T cells isolated from the peripheral blood of all three recipients > 1-year post-HSCT/KT, did not respond to the donor cells, while they did proliferate to the non-donor parental and control cells (Fig. 1). These results demonstrate that post-HSCT/KT the circulating donor-derived T cells are functionally tolerant to the transplanted kidney and, therefore, are unable to mediate graft rejection even in the absence of immune suppression. We have achieved two goals: first, ablating the recipient immune system before HSCT we safely established a new donor-derived immune system - that could also, if required, cure a patient's underlying disease- and, second, functional tolerance to the transplanted kidney.

At 12 to 24 months after KT, all patients have full donor lymphoid and myeloid chimerism, normal renal function without immunosuppression, MLC demonstrated tolerance towards donor cells, and normal proliferative responses to non-donor parental cells. These findings suggest that the combination of αβhaplo-HSCT and SOT could be extended to other solid transplantation like liver and small intestine.

Figure 1

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Figure 1

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