Jakob Kehlen's scientific contributions

The specification of anti-human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibodies is an important task for patients awaiting kidney allografts. Especially the patients immunized in previous transplantations, transfusions, or pregnancies must be carefully observed, since grafting patients with HLA antigens/phenotypes recognized by their pre-formed antibodies are the main cause of harmful hyperacute and acute rejection. The complement-dependent lymphocytotoxicity-based de facto (physical) crossmatching (CDC-CM) has thus been implemented as the last diagnostic obstacle before kidney allografting. Here, an assay is performed by incubating the donors’ lymphocytes with the sera of the prospective recipients, and a negative outcome was desired for eligibility of the underlying organ allocation. Furthermore, valid antibody specification has to be performed at least quarterly for each patient on the kidney waiting list, as defined by certain guidelines, for example, the Eurotransplant guidelines. Based on the exclusion of these specificities, also referred to as virtual crossmatching, certain donors are a priori listed as unacceptable for these recipients. In this case report, we showed that defining unacceptable antigens may be difficult if the recipients’ antibodies are allele-specific after being generated in the patient who is expressing the HLA-class II antigen DQ6 and also developing antibodies against this antigen. Low resolution (two-digit) typing is used before kidney allografting. Thus, these antibodies are generally not definable, as donors and recipients share the same antigen (allelic group). Here, we demonstrate the diagnostic approaches required to exclude inadequate kidney donors for a patient exhibiting antibodies only against the HLA-DQB1*06:04 allelic variant and not against the common phenotype HLA-DQ6. In practice, the patient’s HLA-class II high resolution (four-digit) typing, as well as his antibody specification at the highest (single antigen) resolution, are included. Furthermore, we critically discuss, according to the Eurotransplant guidelines, the missing possibility to declare own HLA-antigens unacceptable, which may be very helpful for recipients who exhibit allele-specific antibodies.