Tissue-typing and crossmatching for organ transplantation began in 1964 when it was discovered that many transplants that rejected immediately could be prevented by performing pre-transplant crossmatches to determine the presence of cytotoxic antibodies.

The Alabama Regional Histocompatibility Laboratory began providing services to the renal transplant program in 1968. Since that time, the sophistication of testing and the number of assays available for solid organs and bone marrow transplantation have grown considerably. Today approximately 2,000 tissue typings are performed annually to determine donor and recipient histocompatibility matching by a highly trained staff of American Board of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics-certified technologist and specialists. The laboratory is accredited by the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, the College of American Pathologists, and by the state of Alabama. It is also a charter member of the Southeastern Organ Procurement Foundation and serves as a reference for proficiency testing.

Tissue-typing is performed using cells isolated from anticoagulated blood. This blood sample is usually collected while the patient is hospitalized for transplant evaluation. Typings for kidney and bone marrow transplant candidates may be collected prior to the hospital stay in the patient’s dialysis facility or physician’s office and shipped to the laboratory by an overnight courier service.

Family members who wish to be tested as possible donors and who live outside the Birmingham area do not need to travel to UAB for histocompatibility testing. If the names and daytime phone numbers of these individuals are provided, the laboratory can arrange to have the blood collected in the town or city where the family members live and shipped to the lab for testing.

The Alabama Histocompatibility Laboratory provides continuous service to UAB and the general medical community with a team on call 24 hours a day for histocompatibility assays. The facility has an excellent reputation for providing the highest quality services as well as the most current technology.

The laboratory performs histocompatibility testing for kidney, heart, lung, liver, pancreas, cornea and bone marrow transplants, including:

• HLA phenotyping


• HLA antibody screening


• crossmatching


• HLA testing for platelet transfusion therapy


• HLA typing for diseases such as hemochromatosis, IDDM, narcolepsy


• testing for bone marrow transplant patients and donors