Lateral Flow Assay to detect CXCL10 as a diagnose-supporting biomarker for Polyomavirus-associated Nephropathy (PVAN)...

Kidney grafts, as the most transplanted organs, require intensive monitoring to ensure optimal transplant survival rates for patients. These rates can be jeopardized by severe, difficult-to-treat opportunistic infections such as polyomavirus, which can lead to polyomavirus-associated nephropathy (PVAN). There is an urgent need for non-invasive biomarker tests to narrow down the number of patients who require a transplant biopsy to confirm PVAN. The chemokine CXCL10 was significantly elevated in urine samples from kidney transplant recipients (KTR) with biopsy-confirmed PVAN compared to KTRs with a protocol biopsy found to be normal (114.8 ± 177.3 pg/ml, n = 22 vs. 11.4 ± 22.3 pg/ml, p < 0.0001, n = 45). Therefore, we developed a lateral flow assay (LFA) for the detection of PVAN with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.832 according to receiver operating characteristic analysis as a point-of-care test.