Detection of newly antibody-defined epitopes on HLA class I alleles reacting with antibodies induced during pregnancy.

Abstract

The determination of HLA mismatch acceptability at the epitope level can be best performed with epitopes that have been verified experimentally with informative antibodies. The website-based International Registry of HLA Epitopes (http://www.epregistry.com.br) has a list of 81 antibody-verified HLA-ABC epitopes but more epitopes need to be added. Pregnancy offers an attractive model to study antibody responses to mismatched HLA epitopes which can be readily determined from the HLA types of child and mother. This report describes a HLAMatchmaker-based analysis of 16 postpregnancy sera tested in single HLA-ABC allele binding assays. Most sera reacted with alleles carrying epitopes that have been antibody-verified, and this study focused on the reactivity of additional alleles that share other epitopes corresponding to eplets and other amino acid residue configurations. This analysis led in the identification of 16 newly antibody-defined epitopes, seven are equivalent to eplets and nine correspond to combinations of eplets in combination with other nearby residue configurations. These epitopes will be added to the repertoire of antibody-verified epitopes in the HLA Epitope Registry.