HLA molecular Variation and human Diseases

This new project HLA-VADIS (start end 2014) focuses on the characterization of HLA-related genetic associations to human diseases (autoimmune, infectious, …) or disease treatments (outcomes of haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation) based on the analysis of extended HLA DNA sequences by high throughput sequencing. It proposes to network scientists working in immunogenetics, epidemiology, histocompatibility molecular evolution and population genetics with the main objectives:

1. to bring updated knowledge on HLA-related associations to diseases, genome-wide association studies, immune response mechanisms towards infections, outcomes of transplantation, population genetic diversity, pathogen prevalence;
2. to provide data on case-control studies, donor-recipient matching, molecular diversity of populations from different geographic regions;
3. to supply deep expertise in several technical domains such as molecular HLA typing with new NGS technologies, biostatistics and bioinformatics.

Interested participants should contact Prof. Alicia Sanchez-Mazas