NCT lookup

Sponsor: Northwestern University

Conditions: Acute Humoral Rejections, Chronic Humoral Rejections, Transplant

Interventions: Blood Draws

Countries: United States

This study is being done to better understand how immunosuppressive medications (anti-rejection medications that may or may not be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)) affect the alloimmune response (how a person's immune system reacts against another person's immune system). This will be determined by the blood tests run on the patients donated blood cells. Specifically, the investigators will test different immunosuppression medications using in-vitro assays (in the laboratory, in test tubes) alone and/or in combination to test how they can affect B-cell proliferation and differentiation, leading to an altered distribution among defined B-cell subsets and to study if exposure of B cells to thymoglobulin can have effects on subsequent interaction between B and T cell in vitro. To enable the investigators to understand how immunosuppressant medications affect immune systems in transplant patients, the investigators need to understand how they affect immune systems in healthy people. To do this, the investigators will need to study blood collected from healthy volunteers.