REPLACEMENT OF HLA CLASS-II SEROLOGY BY THE HLA-DR MICROTITRE PLATE OLIGOTYPING ASSAY - A ONE-YEAR EXPERIENCE IN UNRELATED BONE-MARROW DONOR SELECTION

Because the selection of unrelated bone marrow donors requires a more accurate HLA-typing technique than is used for sibling donors, we have replaced class II serology by a rapid and highly discriminative HLA-D R DNA oligotyping assay on microtitre plates. We present here our 1-ye ar experience with class II typing for 112 potential donors identified for 33 consecutive leukaemic patients. Although the donors were selec ted to be HLA-A, -B, -DR serologically identical, the microtitre plate oligotyping assay detected DR incompatibilities in 52.7% of the patie nt/donor pairs. One third was due to incorrect or incomplete typing of DR11 to DR16, the others to mismatches for the serologically indistin guishable subtypes of DR1, 11, 13 and 15, known to be relevant for T c ell recognition.