Pretransplant cytotoxic donor T-cell activity specific to patient HLA class I antigens correlating with mortality after unrelated BMT

Unrelated bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is associated with increased post-transplant complication rates, partly because more transplantation antigens are mismatched than in HLA-identical related BMT. We have shown previously that the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte precursor (CTLp) test performed before transplantation specifically detects HLA class I mismatches demonstrating its usefulness for the identification of new HLA class I alleles. In this study we analysed the clinical relevance of the CTLp test in 41 patients who underwent unrelated BMT between 1990 and 1994. All patient-donor pairs were HLA-A, -B, -DR compatible as defined by AB-serology and oligotyping for DR1-14. The host-reactive CTLp test was performed using previously frozen peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) as stimulators and PHA blasts as target cells. We found 10 CTLp-positive and 31 CTLp-negative patient-donor pairs. Between the two groups there were no significant differences for age, diagnosis, sex, preconditioning and GvHD prophylaxis. The clinical results for the CTLp positive and the CTLp negative transplants were: severe acute GvHD III-IV 67% and 26% (P = 0.0315), transplant-related mortality 60% and 26% (P = 0.0085), and patient survival at 3.5 years 10% and 54% (P = 0.0006). Seven patient-donor pairs were mismatched for HLA-DR and/or -DQ subtypes. Only one of these seven class II mismatched pairs had a positive CTLp test. In the remaining nine CTLp positive pairs the CTL reactivity was directed against HLA-A, -B or -C antigens, revealing a statistically significant (P < 0.005) correlation between the CTLp frequency and HLA class I matching. In conclusion, the CTLp test helped to select optimally matched bone marrow donors and was particularly useful in association with high resolution oligotyping for DR- and DQ-subtypes for precise matching of both classes of HLA antigens.