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Geffard E, Boussamet L, Walencik A, Delbos F, Limou S, Gourraud PA, Vince N. HLA-EPI: A new EPIsode in exploring donor/recipient epitopic compatibilities. HLA 2021; 99:79-92. [PMID: 34862850 PMCID: PMC9545700 DOI: 10.1111/tan.14505] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2021] [Revised: 11/16/2021] [Accepted: 12/02/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
The HLA system plays a pivotal role both in transplantation and immunology. While classical HLA genotypes matching is made at the allelic level, recent progresses were developed to explore antibody–antigen recognition by studying epitopes. Donor to recipient matching at the epitopic level is becoming a trending topic in the transplantation research field because anti‐HLA antibodies are epitope‐specific rather than allele‐specific. Indeed, different HLA alleles often share common epitopes. We present the HLA‐Epi tool (hla.univ-nantes.fr) to study an HLA genotype at the epitope level. Using the international HLA epitope registry (Epregistry.com.br) as a reference, we developed HLA‐Epi to easily determine epitopic and allelic compatibility levels between several HLA genotypes. The epitope database covers the most common HLA alleles (N = 2976 HLA alleles), representing more than 99% of the total observed frequency of HLA alleles. The freely accessible web tool HLA‐Epi calculates an epitopic mismatch load between different sets of potential recipient‐donor pairs at different resolution levels. We have characterized the epitopic mismatches distribution in a cohort of more than 10,000 kidney transplanted pairs from European ancestry, which showed low number of epitopic mismatches: 56.9 incompatibilities on average. HLA‐Epi allows the exploration of epitope pairing matching to better understand epitopes contribution to immune responses regulation, particularly during transplantation. This free and ready‐to‐use bioinformatics tool not only addresses limitations of other related tools, but also offers a cost‐efficient and reproducible strategy to analyze HLA epitopes as an alternative to HLA allele compatibility. In the future, this could improve sensitization prevention for allograft allocation decisions and reduce the risk of alloreactivity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Estelle Geffard
- Centre de Recherche en Transplantation et Immunologie, Université de Nantes, CHU Nantes, Inserm, Nantes, France
| | - Léo Boussamet
- Centre de Recherche en Transplantation et Immunologie, Université de Nantes, CHU Nantes, Inserm, Nantes, France
| | - Alexandre Walencik
- Centre de Recherche en Transplantation et Immunologie, Université de Nantes, CHU Nantes, Inserm, Nantes, France.,Laboratoire d'Histocompatibilité et d'Immunogénétique, EFS Centre - Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France
| | - Florent Delbos
- Laboratoire d'Histocompatibilité et d'Immunogénétique, EFS Centre - Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France
| | - Sophie Limou
- Centre de Recherche en Transplantation et Immunologie, Université de Nantes, CHU Nantes, Inserm, Nantes, France.,Département Informatique et Mathématiques, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Nantes, France
| | - Pierre-Antoine Gourraud
- Centre de Recherche en Transplantation et Immunologie, Université de Nantes, CHU Nantes, Inserm, Nantes, France
| | - Nicolas Vince
- Centre de Recherche en Transplantation et Immunologie, Université de Nantes, CHU Nantes, Inserm, Nantes, France
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