Potential Role of Novel Imaging Modalities in Transplantation

Reza Razavi, King's College London, London, UK

Imaging the mechanisms involved in Transplantation rejection and the therapies being developed to induce tolerance will have substantial benefits outlined below. Firstly, it should allow much better understanding of the underlying biology at an organ or system level and allow the testing of hypotheses that would otherwise be difficult or expensive to address. Secondly, with the relatively lower bar in taking novel imaging agents into man. The clinical translation of these techniques will provide new biological biomarkers to assess first in man therapies for transplant tolerance. Thirdly, personalising the therapeutic cocktail being used in individual patients on biological end points often requires invasive procedures such as organ biopsies. Novel imaging may allow a non invasive way of optimising these treatments. In this presentation, I will discuss some potential methods and preliminary results of novel imaging agents and techniques using MRI, PET or SPECT to look at activated complement, cellular therapies (dendritic cells and T Regs) in preclinical models and the clinical application of an MR technique for looking at transplant rejection.