CMV after organ transplantation

CMV infection is associated with a significant burden of disease in SOT recipients. We have published on the epidemiology, prevention strategies, and outcomes of CMV infection in this population. Over the last 10 years, we have focused our research on quantifying the burden of CMV disease and on using biomarkers for personalizing preventive strategies against CMV infection [1].

We showed in one of the largest cohorts of SOT recipients that patients on antiviral prophylaxis had better patient and allograft outcomes that those managed by a preemptive approach [2]. The benefit of the use of antiviral prophylaxis was observed not only for preventing CMV, but also for all other herpesvirus infections [3].

We also showed that a novel assay measuring the specific T-cell-mediated immune response to CMV could appropriately stratify the risk for subsequently developing CMV disease [4]. We have recently evaluated in a multicenter randomized clinical trial the utility of measuring CMV-specific cellular immunity (T-Track-CMV) as a tool to determine the duration of antiviral prophylaxis in CMV high-risk SOT recipients. We have shown that, in patients monitored with the T-Track-CMV assay, we were able to reduce the duration of antiviral prophylaxis without carrying a higher risk for CMV events [5]. We are currently assessing the feasibility of the implementation of a CMV cell-mediated immune assay in the routine clinical practice.

Our group actively participates on the EU-funded HORUS consortium (https://www.horus-project.eu/), a European-wide multidisciplinary clinical, translational, and basic research endeavor for improving our understanding of CMV/host interactions in the context of immunosuppression.

• Sophie Seydoux, MD student
• Valérie Sormani, RN