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Barcelona Consensus on Biomarker-Based Immunosuppressive Drugs Management in Solid Organ Transplantation Special Issue
Although one-year survival of transplant organs has substantially improved over the last two decades mostly due to improved immunosuppressive drug regimens, there has been only disappointingly little improvement in long-term survival and transplant organ function. It is reasonable to assume that one of the reasons is that, as of today, the management of transplant patients still heavily relies on diagnostic tools such as creatinine in serum and transplant organ biopsies that have been used since the first successful transplantations more than 5 decades ago.
Modern technologies such as pharmacogenomics, proteomics, metabolomics and molecular biology in combination with in-depth knowledge in immunology and molecular mechanisms have provided the basis for the development of new diagnostic and molecular monitoring strategies with improved sensitivity and specificity and that also allow for individualization of immunosuppressive drug therapy.
In the Barcelona Consensus on Biomarker-Based Immunosuppressive Drugs Management in Solid Organ Transplantation published April 2016 in the special issue of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring leading experts review and critically discuss the current status and clinical implementation of such promising new management strategies.
