18:30 - 20:00
Submission 124
Identification of HLA-A, HLA-B and HLA-C triple homozygous and double homozygous donors: a path towards synthetic superdonor iPS cell-therapies
PS2-97-Poster Presentation
Presented by: Jonathan Arias
Jonathan Arias
1. Vilnius University Life Science Center EMBL partnership institute for gene editing technologies, Laboratory of nuclease enabled cell therapies
Immune matching and rejection pose major hurdles in tissue transplantation. Here, we profile HLA-A, HLA-B, and HLA-C alleles in 3,496 Lithuanian donors genotyped at three-field resolution. The five most frequent alleles constitute 74.6% of HLA-A, 43.2% of HLA-B, and 59.2% of HLA-C, with HLA-A*02:01:01, HLA-B*07:02:01, and HLA-C*07:02:01 being the most common. Lithuanian allele frequencies closely resemble those of populations with pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry, such as European-American and British groups. We identified 153 double homozygotes and 51 triple homozygotes for HLA-A, HLA-B, and HLA-C. Compatibility modeling showed triple homozygous profiles match 60.5% of Lithuanians (33.3% for double homozygotes), 13.4% of British population, and 7.4% of European-Americans. CRISPR-Cas9 guide RNA design yielded 54 candidates predicted to disrupt HLA-A or HLA-B, while preserving HLA-C, producing edited profiles matching over 98.1% of Lithuanians, 95.8% of European-Americans, and 95.6% of British population. Finally, we established 16 fibroblast lines from double and triple homozygotes, offering a resource for immune-compatibility studies and regenerative medicine applications.