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Cord Blood Stem Cells

Cord blood banks collect units with different HLA alleles and haplotypes to volunteer donor banks: a comparative report from Swiss Blood stem cells

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 43, pages 771–778 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Allogeneic haematopoietic SCT is a standard therapy for many patients with haematological diseases. A major aim of public umbilical cord blood (UCB) banking is to establish an inventory with a large HLA diversity. Few studies have compared HLA diversity between UCB banks and volunteer unrelated donor (VUD) registries and examined whether UCB banks indeed collect more units with rare alleles and haplotypes. This study compares HLA-A/B/DRB1 allele frequencies and inferred A/B/DRB1-haplotypes in 1602 UCB units and 3093 VUD from two centres in distinct recruitment areas in Switzerland. The results show that the frequencies of HLA-DRB1 alleles as well as of the HLA-A/B/DRB1 haplotypes differ between UCB and VUD. Ten DRB1 alleles occurred at a 2- to 12-fold higher relative frequency in UCB than in VUD and 27 rare alleles were identified in UCB. Out of these 27 alleles, 15 were absent in the entire VUD data set of the national registry. This difference in allele frequencies was found only by intermediate/high-resolution typing. Targeted recruitment of UCB units from non-Caucasian donors could further increase HLA allele and haplotype diversity of available donors. Intermediate or high-resolution DNA typing is essential to identify rare alleles or allele groups.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by a grant (No. 320000-112585) from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Hematology, Basel Stem Cell Transplant Team, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    S Meyer-Monard, A Rovo, A Gratwohl & A Tichelli

  2. Division of Haematology, University Hospital Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    J Passweg, E Roosnek, Y Chalandon & V Kindler

  3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    C Troeger & W Holzgreve

  4. ZKRD German National Bone Marrow Registry, Ulm, Germany

    H-P Eberhard & C Müller

  5. Swiss Blood stem cells, Bern, Switzerland

    G Nicoloso de Faveri

  6. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    O Irion

  7. Transplantation Immunology Unit/LNRH, University Hospital Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    J-M Tiercy

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  1. S Meyer-Monard
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Correspondence to S Meyer-Monard.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Meyer-Monard, S., Passweg, J., Troeger, C. et al. Cord blood banks collect units with different HLA alleles and haplotypes to volunteer donor banks: a comparative report from Swiss Blood stem cells. Bone Marrow Transplant 43, 771–778 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2008.391

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2008.391

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