Pooling by Allele Partition Designs For Identifying Anti-HLA and Other AlloAntibodies and Selecting Cell and Graft Donors

A method identifying cognate antigenic determinants of antibodies in serum from an individual, to be used in identifying donors of blood, blood products, cells or organ samples for said individual, comprising:

• (i) preparing a multiplicity of pools of cells, wherein the cells for each pool are selected to represent a designated group of alleles at a genetic locus encoding an antigen of interest, such that the alleles in the group all encode the same amino acids at one or more designated variable positions of the amino acid sequence of the antigen;
• (ii) dispensing aliquots of serum from said individual into the pools;
• (iii) monitoring the degree of aggregation of cells in each pool, where a greater or lesser degree of aggregation in a pool indicates that a greater or lesser proportion of the cells in that pool share the cognate antigenic determinants of the antigens recognized by antibodies in the serum;
• (iv) ranking pools in order of the degree of aggregation;
• (v) recording the rankings as an indicator of which pools contain, and therefore which alleles encode, cognate antigenic determinants to antibodies in said serum;
• and
• (vi) selecting suitable donors for the individual from potential donors whose alleles are in the group of alleles for pools with the lesser rankings by degree of aggregation.