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Gonzalo Montero Martin: A Breakthrough in HLA Nomenclature for Transplant Evaluation
Gonzalo Montero Martin/LinkedIn
Feb 28, 2026, 12:09

Gonzalo Montero Martin: A Breakthrough in HLA Nomenclature for Transplant Evaluation

Gonzalo Montero Martin, HLA Director In Training, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article by Steven G. E. Marsh et al, published in HLA Immune Response Genetics:

“HLA Nomenclature History in the making.

Huge congratulations and gratitude to everyone who has made this possible, especially Dr Steven Marsh, Dr Marcelo Fernandez-Vina, Dr Kazutoyo Osoegawa and other co-authors and members of the WHO HLA Nomenclature Committee.

This breakthrough ultimately means a higher level of understanding and accuracy in the definition of HLA antigens and serotypes in order to better evaluate their targeted anti-HLA antibodies and their specificities, which critically determine HLA sensitization categories for solid organ candidate recipients in the waitlist as well as for bone marrow recipients to better prevent graft loss and relapse risk and also to improve transfusion support for refractory platelets patients. This achievement means a tremendous impact for the next generation in the transplant field. Collaboration and sharing can definitely make a difference.

Back at Stanford Blood Center HLA Laboratory when I was working as a Research associate in late 2017, I can still remember vividly being in that R&D lab meeting room with Tamara Vayntrub, Susan Twietmeyer, Deborah Hiraki, Lisa Creary, Sridevi Gangavarapu and Kalyan Mallempati as well as others where we all witnessed and listened to Dr Marcelo asking Dr Kazutoyo: after all these years of experience and thorough literature review, I have in my mind all these additional key aminoacid residues positions that could much better define and explain serological HLA antigen equivalents which we can identify as serotypes.

Can you Kazu develop a bioinformatics tool in order to systematically and thoroughly evaluate all these key residues across all main HLA classical genes with the thousands of different allele variants described?

The rest was history.”

Title: Nomenclature for Factors of the HLA System, 2026

Authors: Steven G. E. Marsh, Kazutoyo Osoegawa, Walter F. Bodmer, Ronald E. Bontrop, Mary N. Carrington, Henry A. Erlich, Sebastiaan Heidt, Rhonda Holdsworth, Wolfgang R. Mayr, Martin Maiers, Peter Parham, Effie W. Petersdorf, James Robinson, John Trowsdale, Marcelo Fernández-Viña

Read Full Article on HLA Immune Response Genetics

Gonzalo Montero Martin

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Effie W. Petersdorf Gonzalo Montero Martin Health Hematology Hemostasis Today Henry A. Erlich HLA HLA Nomenclature Committee James Robinson John Trowsdale Kazutoyo Osoegawa Marcelo Fernández-Viña Martin Maiers Mary N. Carrington Medicine Peter Parham Rhonda Holdsworth Ronald E. Bontrop Sebastiaan Heidt Steven G. E. Marsh Walter F. Bodmer WHO Wolfgang R. Mayr
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