Towards the identification of the relative immunogenicity of individual HLA antibody epitopes.

Recent data suggest that HLA epitope matching is more predictive for the formation of donor specific antibodies (DSA) after transplantation than classical HLA antigen matching. A proper definition of the epitopes and their immunogenicity is crucial for a broad clinical application of epitope matching in solid organ transplantation. For that purpose, a novel epitope component was started during the 17th International Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Workshop. Only a limited number of antibody data was available, resulting in a preliminary analysis confirming the potential relevance of epitope matching for the development of donor specific antibodies. During the actual workshop sessions the participants mainly discussed the future strategy to collect and analyze a large number of data in the framework of the 18th International Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Workshop, which will take place in 2021. All practical issues can be found on the website www.ihiw18.org. Data collection will already start in early 2019 in order to have sufficient time for detailed analyses using several different algorithms.