Evaluation of the Efficacy of Dd-cfDNA in Routine Patient Care in Kidney Transplant Recipients"

The investigator hypothesizes that the combined use of (1) Donor-derived cell-free DNA (dd-cfDNA) in peripheral blood predicting anti-donor immunological activation or quiescence (2) interactive and actionable data analytics delivered at the bedside will promote safe clinical follow-up of kidney transplant patients with less need for invasive biopsy and less induced risk surveillance by allograft protocol biopsies to assess allograft rejection in clinically stable kidney transplant patients. In addition, the evaluation of the transcriptional changes in tissue samples in selected patients using automated processing of digital slide images and intragraft gene expression profiles will provide a better diagnosis of the rejection mechanisms to provide the best therapeutic approach as compared to current clinical practice. We therefore propose a French, multicenter, prospective randomized trial comparing two strategies of follow-up: in the first group, a biopsy is performed at M3, M12 and for clinical indication whenever considered necessary by the clinician during the first 18 months of follow-up after transplant. In the second group, patients will have the same follow-up as in the first group, but reports providing dd-cfDNA results and relevant medical parameters will be provided to the physician to help him in the decision to perform a biopsy or not.