Analysis of patients who develop class II HLA antibodies post-Tx

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  A clinical study of Oxford Transplant Centre patients who develop class II HLA antibodies following solid organ transplant.

• IRAS ID

  259998

• Contact name

  Mian Chen

• Contact email

  mian.chen@ouh.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 1 months, 14 days

• Research summary

  The immune system consists of many components including organs, tissues, cells and their products, such as antibodies. These components work together to defend the body and protect it against disease causing organisms or substances. The immune system works by recognising cells and tissues produced by the individual as harmless ‘self’ or harmful ‘foreign’ or ‘non-self’, using a specialised group of proteins that exist on the surface of cells, known as ‘human leukocyte antigens’ (HLA).

  The ability to distinguish self from non-self is essential to mobilise its components to defend against infection from organisms such as viruses and bacteria. One of the ways by which the immune system deals with infections is via the production of antibodies. Antibodies recognise and remove foreign substances in the body by recruiting other immune system components to help fight the infection.
  
  From the point of view of organ transplantation, the immune system sees the transplanted organ as just another ‘infection’ that needs to be removed. To reduce the chance and scale of the immune response, recipients and donors are ‘matched’ prior to any transplant. ‘Matching’ refers to the testing carried out before transplantation to predict whether an organ is ‘similar’ enough to be treated as ‘self’ by the recipients immune system. One test involves determining the HLA type of the recipient and the donor. Generally speaking, the more similarities shared between the HLA types the better. It is believed that transplants that are carried out across fewer HLA similarities, have a higher risk of antibody production which may result in reduced survival of the transplanted organ.

  This project aims to evaluate the Oxford transplant patient population, looking for individuals who made antibodies following transplant, and to understand the relationship between recipient and donor HLA types and antibody production post-transplant.

• REC name

  N/A

• REC reference

  N/A