Determination of intracellular adenosine triphosphate for detecting anti-HLA antibody-mediated cytolysis....

Intracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) determination appears to be a rapid, and reliable technique for the detection of complement-dependent cytolysis mediated by cytotoxic anti-HLA sera. Only a few minutes after the addition of complement to anti-HLA-coated target lymphocytes, a striking loss of intracellular ATP is observed. The technique can be easily performed with minute amounts of cells, serum, and complement, and exactly following the technical conditions of the standard HLA typing microcytotoxicity test (MCT). One of its main advantages over MCT is that the reading of results can be performed automatically. Since in most tissue typing laboratories all steps preceding the reading of MCT results have already been automated, this method could be of great interest, with a view to permitting the complete automation of HLA typing.