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An update to the HLA Nomenclature Guidelines of the World Marrow Donor Association, 2012

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 48, pages 1387–1388 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

For more than two decades, international cooperation and information technology have been playing key roles in the identification of suitable unrelated donors and cord blood units for hematopoietic SCT. To ensure consistent coding and interpretation of HLA data among the linked computer systems, the World Marrow Donor Association has standardized the extensions of the World Health Organization (WHO) Nomenclature for factors of the HLA system applied in practice. The first version of this report published in 2007 has become the reference for the technical validation of HLA information on donors and patients in the context of search and matching and is used by registries of volunteer unrelated hematopoietic stem cell donors and umbilical cord blood banks throughout the world. The present update became necessary after the major revision of the WHO HLA nomenclature in April 2010. It now covers issues arising when alleles are withdrawn or renamed because of the continuous updating of the WHO HLA nomenclature. In addition, formal validation and interpretation rules for the so-called ‘multiple allele codes’ have been added.

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Acknowledgements

This has been a project of the Information Technology Working Group of the WMDA. We thank all working group and board members for their valuable input and their critical reading of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zentrales Knochenmarkspender-Register für Deutschland (ZKRD), Ulm, Germany

    W Bochtler, H-G Rist & C R Müller

  2. National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), Minneapolis, MN, USA

    M Maiers

  3. Europdonor Foundation, Leiden, The Netherlands

    J N A Bakker & M Oudshoorn

  4. DKMS German Bone Marrow Donor Center, Tübingen, Germany

    D M Baier, J A Hofmann & J Pingel

  5. Department of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

    M Oudshoorn

  6. Anthony Nolan Research Institute and UCL Cancer Institute, London, UK

    S G E Marsh

  7. Department of Oncology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA

    C K Hurley

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  1. W Bochtler
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  2. M Maiers
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  3. J N A Bakker
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  4. D M Baier
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  5. J A Hofmann
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  6. J Pingel
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  7. H-G Rist
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  8. M Oudshoorn
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  9. S G E Marsh
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  10. C R Müller
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  11. C K Hurley
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on behalf of the Information Technology Working Group of the World Marrow Donor Association, Leiden, The Netherlands

Corresponding author

Correspondence to W Bochtler.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on Bone Marrow Transplantation website

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Bochtler, W., Maiers, M., Bakker, J. et al. An update to the HLA Nomenclature Guidelines of the World Marrow Donor Association, 2012. Bone Marrow Transplant 48, 1387–1388 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2013.93

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