Summary of the ISHLT Consensus Conference on Emerging Understanding of Antibodies and Antibody-Mediated Rejection in Heart Transplantation

Published 11 June 2025

Jon Kobashigawa, MD; Andreas Zuckermann, MD; Adriana Zeevi, PhD; Markus Barten, MD, PhD; Patricia Chang, MD, MHS; Monica Colvin, MD, MS; Guillaume Coutance, MD, PhD; Anne Dipchand, MD; Stephan Ensminger, MD, DPhil; Marta Farrero, MD; Marlena Habal, MD; Anne Halpin, PhD; Annette Jackson, PhD; Yosef Manla, MD; Kavitha Muthiah, MBBS, PhD; Luciano Potena, MD, PhD; Elaine Reed, PhD; Kelly Schlendorf, MD, MHS; Palak Shah, MD, MS; Anat Tambur, DMD, PhD; Simon Urschel, MD; Steven Webber, MBChB; Lori West, MD, DPhil; Jong-Chan Youn, MD, PhD; Jignesh Patel, MD, PhD; On behalf of the Consensus Conference participants.

J Heart Lung Transplant. June 2025.

• Advanced Heart Failure & Transplantation
• Cardiology
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Consensus Document
• Perspective
• Publications & Journals
• Standards & Guidelines

This Consensus Conference Summary presents the findings and consensus statements from the April 2023 consensus conference on antibodies and AMR in heart transplant patients, endorsed by ISHLT and held in conjunction with the 2023 Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions in Denver, CO USA.

The understanding of circulating antibodies and their relationship to antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) has yet to be fully elucidated in heart transplantation. Although important in both pre- and post-transplant, it is not known what approach is optimal for treating these patients with circulating antibodies. The 2023 Consensus Conference represented a collaborative multidisciplinary effort by experts in cardiothoracic transplantation from across the world to understand and discuss the optimum approach and treatment of circulating antibodies and AMR in heart transplant candidates and recipients, and served as a forum to better understand the impact antibodies and AMR have on transplant patients

Read at JHLT

Read the Perspective Piece at JHLT Download the Perspective Piece

The ISHLT Perspective Piece is a new document type developed to accompany all ISHLT Documents and is specifically designed for print publication in JHLT. The piece The piece will set the context for the document in an easy-to-read manner and serves as an opportunity for writing groups to speak directly to the heart and lung transplant community about the rationale behind each document, its most important takeaways, and the hard work that went into creating it.