Multiple clinical parameters were obtained for the long-term stable patients within the GenHomme project, including donor and recipient demographic characteristics, clinical history of renal graft failure, transplantation
monitoring, full blood counts and medications biochemical screening. Non-transplanted patients with “non-immune” RFA (n=8) had a creatinemia 654±193 μmol/L and proteinuria >1 g 24 h−1. The causes of RFA were polycystic kidney (4/8 patients), renal dysplasia (2/8 patients), interstitial nephropathy (1/8 patients) and malformative uropathy (1/8 patients). Finally, healthy individuals (HEI, non-transplanted individuals, n=14) with normal renal function and no known infectious pathology for at least 6 months prior to the study were enrolled. LY2606368 mw PBMC from HLA-A2 CMV+ patients were stained with PE-labeled anti-human CD8 mAb, Alexa700-labeled anti-human VX 770 CD3 mAb, Alexa 647-labeled anti-human CD4 mAb and pp65-HLA-A2 APC-labeled multimer. DAPI was used to exclude dead cells. pp65-HLA-A2 APC-labeled multimer was prepared by incubating for 1h APC-streptavidin with biotinylated pp65-HLA-A2 monomer. All mAb were purchased from BD Biosciences and biotinylated pp65-HLA-A2 monomer was produced by INSERM core facility (Nantes, France). DAPI−CD3+CD4−CD8+, DAPI−CD3+CD4−CD8+pp65-HLA-A2 multimer− and DAPI−CD3+CD4−CD8+pp65-HLA-A2 multimer+
were separated from PBMC using a high-speed cell sorter (FACSAria, BD Biosciences). Purity was greater than 98%. Blood, collected in EDTA tubes, was obtained Thymidine kinase from a peripheral vein or arteriovenous fistula. PBMC were separated
on an MSL layer (Eurobio) and frozen in TRIzol® reagent (Invitrogen) for RNA extraction. Total RNA was reverse-transcribed using a classical MMLV cDNA synthesis (Invitrogen). Complementary DNA was amplified by PCR using pairs of primers specific of each Vβ gene 10, elongated and electrophorezed using a gel sequencer (ABI Prism 377 DNA sequencer – Applied Biosystems) 35. The CDR3 profiles obtained were transformed into mathematical distributions and normalized so that the total area was equal to one. In parallel, the level of Vβ family transcripts was measured by real-time quantitative PCR and normalized by a housekeeping gene (HPRT). The CDR3-LD was then combined with each normalized Vβ transcript amounts to obtain the TcL data as described previously 15, 36, 37. Several parameters or metrics can be used to describe, and summarize with one value, the shape of the Vβ CDR3-LD. Indeed, the distribution of 13 lengths of Vβ CDR3 reflects different immunological situations which can be analyzed 12. Kurtosis, a mathematical index, has been chosen to quantify the CDR3-LD diversity 17. The Kurtosis reflects the degree of “peakedness” of a distribution 38 and is perfectly suitable for describing CDR3-LD with expansions.