Post-mortem HLA tissue typing of retinal pigment epithelial cells.

Retinal pigment epithelial cells (RPE) were derived from bulbi of cornea donors and maintained in culture. The time-span between donor's death and cell cultivation ranged from 2 to 122 h. The mean numbers of hours was 25.6 (n = 130). After IFN-gamma stimulation, cells were serologically typed for class I and class II antigens. Unclear class I allospecificities were verified by one-dimensional isoelectric focusing. Data from the serological typing of lymphocytes and those of the serological and biochemical typing of RPE from the same donors were compared in 22 cases. There was a discrepancy of less than 5%, whereby either the typing on lymphocytes could not identify some specificities declared as blanks or the RPE typing had failed to clearly define a specificity. Our data show that the strategy adopted here is very successful for tissue typing post mortem, thus increasing the number of available HLA-matched corneas and consequently reducing the number of corneal graft rejections.