Large-scale oligonucleotide typing for HLA-DRB1/3/4 and HLA-DQB1 is highly accurate, specific, and reliable

DNA typing of HLA class II alleles of the DRB1/3/4 and DQB1 loci using sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes and polymerase chain reaction-amplified DNA was used for the large-scale typing of donors for the National Marrow Donor Program unrelated donor registry. The results of quality control analysis for the first 7 months of the project show the typing to be highly accurate, specific, and reliable. The percent of correctly classified HLA oligotypes based on 1652 DRB1 and 1652 DQB1 assignments was greater than 99% for DRB1/DRB3/DRB4 and greater than 98% for DQB1. This level of accuracy is particularly remarkable because the quality control samples could not be distinguished from 9011 donor samples tested at the same time by the laboratories.