HLA and Renal Transplantation

Abstract

The realization that tissues express the antigenic individuality of the host began with Landsteiner's discovery of the major red-cell groups shortly after the turn of the century.¹ The role of typing and cross-matching in blood transfusion is certainly well established, and, in a sense, represents a simple model for approaching the problem of matching other tissues for transplantation. Although the matching of leukocyte antigens of the HLA system encoded on Chromosome 6 is of unquestioned importance to the survival of renal allografts from living related donors, its predictive value in cadaveric transplantation has been the subject of much debate over . . .