Computational Approaches to Facilitate Epitope-Based HLA Matching in Solid Organ Transplantation

Epitope-based hla matching has been emerged over the last few years as an improved method for hla matching in solid organ transplantation. the epitope-based matching concept has been incorporated in both the pirche-ii and the hlamatchmaker algorithm to find the most suitable donor for a recipient. for these algorithms,high-resolution hla genotype data of both donor and recipient is required. since high-resolution hla genotype data is often not available,we developed a computational method which allows epitope-based hla matching from serological split level hla typing relying on hla haplotype frequencies. to validate this method,we simulated a donor-recipient population for which pirche-ii and eplet values were calculated when using both high-resolution hla genotype data and serological split level hla typing. the majority of the serological split level hla-determined ln(pirche-ii)/ln(eplet) values did not or only slightly deviate from the reference group of high-resolution hla-determined ln(pirche-ii)/ln(eplet) values. this deviation was slightly increased when hla-c or hla-dq was omitted from the input and was substantially decreased when using two-field resolution hla genotype data of the recipient and serological split level hla typing of the donor. thus,our data suggest that our computational approach is a powerful tool to estimate pirche-ii/eplet values when high-resolution hla genotype data is not available. © 2017 kirsten geneugelijk et al.