Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Dec 24, 2016; 6(4): 608-619
Published online Dec 24, 2016. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v6.i4.608
Biology of chronic graft-vs-host disease: Immune mechanisms and progress in biomarker discovery
Richard B Presland
Richard B Presland, Department of Oral Health Sciences, School of Dentistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
Richard B Presland, Division of Dermatology, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
Author contributions: The author solely contributes to the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Richard B Presland, PhD, Department of Oral Health Sciences, School of Dentistry, University of Washington, 1959 NE Pacific St, Box 357475, Seattle, WA 98195, United States. rp@uw.edu
Telephone: +1-206-6166706
Received: April 16, 2016
Peer-review started: April 19, 2016
First decision: June 7, 2016
Revised: August 15, 2016
Accepted: September 13, 2016
Article in press: September 18, 2016
Published online: December 24, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Chronic graft-vs-host disease (cGVHD) is a frequent long-term medical complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation which can have a devastating impact on overall health and quality of life. This immune-mediated disorder manifests as an inflammatory and autoimmune-like disorder that can affect multiple tissues in an individual patient. Both clinical and animal studies demonstrate that multiple T cell subsets, as well as B cells, and their secreted cytokines play important roles in cGVHD initiation and progression. In the last decade many molecular biomarkers have been identified that correlate with cGVHD onset and/or progression, and some might have applications clinically in the near future.