Identifying Tissue-of-origin in Transplant Patients and Patients with Malignancies.

Condition(s) studied

Study summary

the investigators are developing a method for diagnosing cell death in the body using blood and urine tests. The test is based on two well-known phenomena in biology. First, when cells in the body die, short fragments of their DNA, about 150 bases long, find their way into the bloodstream for a short period of time of about fifteen minutes to an hour, before being eliminated in the liver and kidney. The details of this process are not fully known, but it is clear that the phenomenon exists. Already today, this phenomenon is widely used clinically for prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal aberrations in the DNA of the fetus that is found in large quantities in the mother's blood. Liquid biopsies from cancer have already been developed, based on the identification of somatic mutations originating from a cancerous tumor in the free DNA found in the serum or plasma. In the case of cancer, liquid biopsies may be a convenient way to monitor the genetic evolution of the tumor, response to treatments, and more. This approach of detecting cell death using free DNA in the bloodstream has a severe limitation when it comes to the death of cells whose genome is not different from the genome of the other tissues in the body, and therefore the DNA cannot be associated with the tissue of origin based on sequence analysis.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Improvement of liver function tests including ALT and AST levels after immunosuppression — Measurements of liver enzymes after diagnosis of acute rejection
  Reduction of liver enzymes following immunosuppression treatment

Trial sites (1)

More Hadassah Medical Organization trials in Israel