Human lymphocyte antigens.

Abstract

This thesis embodies much of my work done over the past 25 years. The impetus for these studies was the need to provide the best tissue typing available for organ transplantation and to overcome the problems of defining HLA antigens in different ethnic groups. These goals were achieved by extensive international collaboration and participation in the International Histocompatibility Workshops. The discovery that the HLA antigens are associated with many diseases led to an epidemic of investigations in which over 500 diseases have been studied. In retrospect, it is not surprising that auto-immune diseases such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis showed such marked associations with HLA antigens. The studies in Part II of this thesis were aimed at finding out if the HLA associations reported in Caucasian populations were also present in the Black and Indian populations. These research interests led to my being invited by the National Science Council of the Republic of China in Taiwan to be a Visiting Professor at the National Taiwan University in Taipei for the 1989 academic year. I investigated the association between HLA and naso-pharyngeal carcinoma in Chinese during that year. I wish to express my appreciation to Dr Peter Brain who inspired the early investigations and continued to encourage and support my research. I am grateful to all my co-authors and the many colleagues, clinicians and laboratory staff who have contributed to the various research programmes. Studies of the relationship of the HLA system to cancer, diabetes, arthritis and other diseases have been supported in part by grants from the National Cancer Association and the Medical Research Council of South Africa.