Our Immunobiology Research Program facilitates CIBMTR Immunobiology Working Committee (IBWC) studies that use samples from the Research Sample Repository (cell and serum samples collected by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP)/Be The Match from related and unrelated transplant donors, cord blood units and recipients). The IBWC seeks proposals for studies that are highly translational and hypothesis-driven. Such studies usually seek to define the clinical importance of the immune system using HCT as the model system.
This program facilitates collaborative studies that focus on:
- Improving outcomes after hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), through a better understanding of the immune response pathways
- Increasing the availability of unrelated donor HCT through a better understanding of donor and recipient genetic determinants
- Understanding the role of HLA-matched or mismatched related and unrelated donor HCT compared to other available graft sources
Specific research supported includes:
- Genes and gene products of the major histocompatibility complex
- Natural killer cell repertoire
- Cytokine/pro-inflammatory cytokine and immune response determinants
- Minor histocompatibility loci
- Other immune regulatory genes and products (such as anti-HLA antibodies)
- Comparative studies that involve HLA-mismatched related donors or any unrelated donors
Key activities include:
Observational studies
Immunobiology-focused research is conducted through the IBWC utilizing samples from the NMDP Research Sample Repository.
NMDP research activities
The Donor/Recipient Pair Project is a retrospective typing project to characterize class I (HLA-A, B and C) and class II (HLA-DRB, DQB1 and DPB1) alleles and KIR genotypes of stored donor/recipient paired samples from the NMDP Repository. To date, more than 32,000 paired samples have been characterized for HLA (~80% include DPB1) and over 18,000 for KIR. The resultant data are stored in an NMDP/Be The Match-developed database and available to any researcher with a CIBMTR-approved study that wishes to analyze the impact of HLA matching or KIR genotype as either the focus of, or as a variable in a research study. The allele-level data are also used to assess genetic diversity within the NMDP/Be The Match transplant population and have focused on the evaluation of HLA haplotypes within the donor and recipient data set.
