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Updated: Jul 11, 2025
A Porcine Heterotopic Heart Transplantation Protocol for Delivery of Therapeutics to a Cardiac Allograft
Published on: February 14, 2022
Towards Allograft Longevity: Leveraging Omics Technologies to Improve Heart Transplant Outcomes
Lauren K Truby1, Dimitri Maamari2,3, Amit Saha2
1University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, TX, 75390, USA. lauren.truby@utsouthwestern.edu.
Insights
Omics technologies offer new ways to find biomarkers for heart transplant (HT) complications. These advanced tools can personalize care, improving long-term survival for HT recipients.
Area of Science:
- Biomarker discovery
- Translational medicine
- Genomics and proteomics
Background:
- Heart transplantation (HT) is the best treatment for end-stage heart disease.
- Despite advances, HT survival is limited by complications like infection, rejection, and allograft dysfunction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review current and future uses of omics technologies in heart transplantation.
- To highlight how omics can improve diagnosis and management of post-transplant complications.
Main Methods:
- Review of omics technologies including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.
- Discussion of established (GEP, dd-cfDNA) and emerging omics platforms.
Main Results:
- Omics technologies can identify novel biomarkers for various disease states.
- Established omics assays like GEP and dd-cfDNA are used in HT care.
- Emerging platforms show potential for personalized post-HT management.
Conclusions:
- Omics-based assays can enhance patient and allograft longevity.
- Precision medicine approaches in HT are facilitated by omics technologies.
- Leveraging diverse omics platforms is key to advancing HT care.
Purpose Of Review:
Heart transplantation (HT) remains the optimal therapy for patients living with end-stage heart disease. Despite recent improvements in peri-transplant management, the median survival after HT has remained relatively static, and complications of HT, including infection, rejection, and allograft dysfunction, continue to impact quality of life and long-term survival.
Recent Findings:
Omics technologies are becoming increasingly accessible and can identify novel biomarkers for, and reveal the underlying biology of, several disease states. While some technologies, such as gene expression profiling (GEP) and donor-derived cell-free DNA (dd-cfDNA), are routinely used in the clinical care of HT recipients, a number of emerging platforms, including pharmacogenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, hold great potential for identifying biomarkers to aid in the diagnosis and management of post-transplant complications. Omics-based assays can improve patient and allograft longevity by facilitating a personalized and precision approach to post-HT care. The following article is a contemporary review of the current and future opportunities to leverage omics technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics in the field of HT.
