MHC and KIR Sequencing and Association Analyses in the iGeneTRAiN Studies

NIH RePORTER · NIH · U01 · $434,827 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY HLA donor-recipient (D-R) matching is critical for graft outcomes following Kidney, Heart, Lung and hematopoietic cell transplantation. Genetic association studies in large well-characterized transplant cohorts are lacking and there is a clear need to characterize how MHC and KIR genetic variants underpin transplantation outcomes. The International Genetics & Translational Research in Transplantation Network (iGeneTRAiN) was formed to increase the understanding of the genetic architecture of transplant outcomes, by bringing together transplantation studies with genome-wide association study (GWAS) datasets from >52,600 recipients/donors across well-curated heart, kidney, liver and lung transplant phenotype datasets. This constitutes the largest solid-organ transplant consortium ever assembled. A strategic Pharma collaboration where we sequence key HLA Class I and II in the majority of iGeneTRAiN studies, and additional MHC/KIR regions in subsets of studies, is facilitating ample statistical power to assess association studies of HLA and KIR with key transplant-related outcomes. A large portion of the iGeneTRAiN database is derived from non-European ancestry samples, which greatly addresses the lack of adequate MHC/KIR genetic data in these populations.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10438855
Project number
5U01AI152960-03
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Principal Investigator
Malek Kamoun
Activity code
U01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$434,827
Award type
5
Project period
2020-09-02 → 2025-06-30