Monday, 22 February 2021
Newly developed method helps to quantify the residual immunogenic potential of decellularized human heart valves
Dot-blot techniques demonstrate highly individual immune response towards decellularized homografts - Results published Open Access in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic-Surgery
https://academic.oup.com/ejcts/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ejcts/ezaa393/6129147
The above link leads to the original publication, which has been published recently by researchers at the Hannover Medical School.
Within this publication the authors describe a new semi-quantitative Dot-blot analysis to screen for preformed recipient antibodies against decellularized human heart valves (DHV) using secondary anti-human antibodies. 15 DHV samples were solubilized and exposed to serum from 20 healthy controls.
There was a high intra-individual variance of antibody binding with some healthy controls showing >10 times higher antibody binding towards 2 different DHV. In general, younger controls showed more immune response than older and aortic homografts elicited more immune response than pulmonary homografts. The authors concluded that, residual immunogenicity of decellularized homografts appears to exist despite almost complete cell removal.
The established dot blot method may allow for a semi-quantitative assessment of the individual immune response towards extracellular DHV components and potentially the possibility of preoperative homograft matching.
