Investigating the impact of regulatory cell therapy on local immune response in kidney allografts

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) have the ability to suppress allogeneic immune responses and have therefore become interesting as a possible cellular therapy.  Our group is leading a phase II randomised clinical trial utilising Tregs as a cellular therapy for kidney transplant recipients.

The proposed project aims to in depth investigate the local immune response within the transplanted allograft, specifically focusing on infiltrating regulatory T cells and their local interactions with other infiltrating immune cells, utilising renal biopsy samples from the cell therapy trial.  We hypothesise, that cellular therapy with regulatory T cells will result in trafficking of the Tregs cells to the allograft and creation of a local tolerogenic microenvironment.

We are proposing to utilise our unique collection of Treg treated patients’ biopsy samples employing the cutting-edge technology of spatial transcriptomics and single cell RNA sequencing to determine the cellular and molecular composition of leukocyte infiltrates in allograft biopsies, dissect cellular interactions in situ and determine Treg homing to the allograft.