Introduction
END-STAGE RENAL DISEASE, KIDNEY
Kidney transplantation remains the preferred treatment for end-stage renal disease [One such new strategy that may allow cessation of tacrolimus use is mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) therapy. MSCs have been shown to exert anti-inflammatory, immune-regulatory and tissue repair properties [In the randomized phase II TRITON trial, administration of autologous bone marrow derived MSCs with concomitant early tacrolimus withdrawal was compared to standard tacrolimus dosing in living-donor kidney transplant recipients [In this study we applied mass cytometry to perform in-depth characterization of the peripheral blood immune composition of patients included in the TRITON trial. We developed and validated two metal-conjugated mass cytometry antibody panels containing 40 antibodies each for the staining of bio-banked PBMCs and studied the influence of MSC therapy on immune cell subsets at 24 and 52 weeks after transplantation.