Role of HLA in cardiothoracic transplantation

Abstract

In current clinical practice, transplant clinicians create collaborative working relationships with histocompatibility laboratory scientists to identify the risk of long‐term graft failure, which may assist in establishing strategies for treatment and surveillance. Transplant immunology research also focuses on optimizing human leukocyte antibody tissue typing and defines the most effective test for detecting the presence of donor‐specific antibodies. Although several studies have been conducted, data on pediatric heart transplant recipients are limited. Epitope load information may be utilized to identify donors with permissible human leukocyte antibody mismatches to increase transplant success. Although current guidelines do not consider human leukocyte antibody epitope‐based matching tools, these guidelines could be useful for identifying recipients at a high risk of donor‐specific antibody production, which would be appropriate for routine donor‐specific antibody screening to initiate early interventions to prevent antibody‐mediated rejection. Human leukocyte antibody matching at the epitope level offers an effective approach for identifying acceptable mismatches in sensitized patients and provides information about epitope loads. In the future, eplet matching may be used to define the best immunosuppressive therapy protocol for cardiothoracic organ transplantation. This report provides an overview of the role of human leukocyte antibodies in heart and lung transplantation.