About

The New South Wales Tissue Typing Department is part of the National Transplantation Services (NTS) Portfolio of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS). National Transplantation Services also includes the Tissue Typing Laboratories in Adelaide (South Australia) and Melbourne (Victorian Transplantation and Immunogenetics Service or VTIS).

The New South Wales (NSW) Tissue Typing Department is committed to providing services and scientific expertise in the areas of solid organ and bone marrow transplantation for NSW and the wider Australian community and aims to establish leadership in histocompatibility testing by encouraging innovation through high quality research and by introducing new technologies that will facilitate the provision of an efficient, cost-effective histocompatibility and matching service.

NSW Tissue Typing provides a human leucocyte antigen (HLA) typing and antibody testing service for transplant patients and potential organ donors in New South Wales. The transplant areas covered include kidney, heart, lung, liver, pancreas, bone marrow and cord blood. The department provides a 24-hour on call service for the typing and matching of patients and donors as part of the Australian national organ allocation system.

NSW Tissue Typing supplies HLA testing services to the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry (ABMDR) and is involved in donor recruitment in NSW through the ABMDR NSW Donor Centre. The ABMDR NSW Search Coordinator manages NSW patient searches for potential bone marrow and cord blood donors. The NSW Tissue Typing Department also performs HLA typing for the Sydney Cord Blood Bank.

HLA typing is available for a range of diseases with established HLA associations including ankylosing spondylitis (B27 typing), narcolepsy, rheumatoid arthritis and coeliac disease, as well as for research studies.

HLA alleles are defined by either serological or molecular genetic methods, including sequencing for high resolution typing of alleles for bone marrow or cord blood transplantation. The genes typed include the HLA class I loci HLA-A, B and C and HLA class II loci DRB1, DRB3, DRB4, DRB5, DQB1 and DPB1. Antibody screening is performed by a lymphocytotoxicity assay or with Luminex technology while crossmatching can be done either by lymphocytotoxicity or by flow cytometry. Cellular assays are available for the detection of cytotoxic or helper T cell precursors. Using ELISPOT technology the frequency of specific cytokine-releasing cells can also be determined for both pre- and post-transplant scenarios.

The NSW Tissue Typing Department includes a Platelet Immunology Reference Laboratory which supplies platelet antigen phenotyping, genotyping and antibody screening for patients who are refractory to platelet transfusion or for other conditions such as foetomaternal alloimmune thrombocytopenia (FMAIT) or post transfusion purpura (PTP).

NSW Tissue Typing was the first Australasian tissue typing laboratory to receive accreditation by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI) and is also accredited by NATA (National Association of Testing Authorities) and ASEATTA (Australasian and South East Asian Tissue Typing Association). The laboratory is currently preparing for licensing by the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration).

Research and Development (R&D) is a vital part of our activities and the NSW Tissue Typing Department is part of the Research Unit of Transfusion Medicine and Immunogenetics, Central Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Sydney. Research interests of the department include genetics of cellular antigens on leucocytes and red blood cells and investigations of their role in transplant graft survival and transfusion reactions; cellular and serological assays to predict the outcome of bone marrow transplants and the survival of solid organ grafts, including the identification of immune cells that produce regulatory proteins; population genetics, anthropology and the identification of new alleles involved in the immune response.

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