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Red Cell Genomics Research primarily addresses the needs of transfusion medicine by establishing accurate genotyping methods for various blood groups to alleviate the typing difficulties caused either by the lack of serological reagents and/or assay sensitivity. Currently the Red Cell typing labs utilize the age old serological methods, which for large part still provide quality typing but the scarcity of reagent grade polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies crate numerous challenges, 1) in donor-recipient phenotyping, 2) in identifying rare blood types and, 3) in typing multiply transfused recipients, to name a few. The primary objective of the program is to establish a uniform DNA based assays for antigens of importance in transfusion medicine.
In the short-term we are working to develop an assay system that could be used to type several relevant blood groups, and one that could be automated rapidly. In the long run, our goal is to develop a single Blood SNP-Chip to shorten testing time and limit errors by automating both the assay and data analysis. The Blood SNP-Chip offers an optimal solution to reduced availability of typing reagents and their escalating costs.
As of last ISBT annual meeting in June 2008, there are 30 blood groups, of which we understand the functions of only a handful. Our lab would be actively involved in structure –function analysis of the rarely discussed blood groups and their impact on transfusion and transplantation.
The extensive polymorphism at the major histocompatibility complex is thought to confer immune protection to populations by permitting alteration in the specificity of the combining site and the repertoire of peptides bound. It is this extensive polymorphism that captivated my attention, and as a result, for the past two decades my research interests revolved around defining and understanding the allelic variability at the MHC and its functional implications. The evolutionary analysis of this complex is expected to elucidate mechanisms that generate and maintain polymorphism, to derive feasible primate models, and to develop therapeutic intervention strategies for various disease trials.
MHC and diseases and Transplant Tolerance are two major areas of our research focus. Autoimmune diabetes has shown clear association with class II MHC molecules. We are currently collaborating with various investigators to understand the role of MHC in autoimmune diabetes, in the presence and absence of autoantibodies. We have extended our interest in diabetes to treatment by use of nonhuman primate islet transplant models. Islet transplantation in the presence of various subpopulations of hematopoietic stem cell infusions in the absence of immunosuppression presented some positive leads in transplant tolerance.
The need for heavy immunosuppressive drugs is a major drawback not yet overcome in most transplant recipients. Research efforts to alleviate this included transplant tolerance via co-stimulation blockade. Induction of tolerance to donor antigens seems to be the most prominent and promising alternative to that we had pursued since mid nineties and still continue to collaborate on nonhuman primate and dog models with various investigators. |
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