Contents

### **Preface XI**


Masahito Katahira

Chapter 7 **Functional Implications of MHC Associations in Autoimmune Diseases with Special Reference to Type1 Diabetes, Vitiligo and Hypoparathyroidism 201** Rajni Rani and Archana Singh

Preface

This year marks the 60th anniversary (1954) of the discovery of the human major histocom‐ patibility complex (MHC), or the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system, by the French Nobel laureate physician Jean Dausset, as well as the 55th anniversary (1958) of the identifi‐ cation and naming of the first human leukocyte antigen, MAC (equivalent to the HLA-A2 antigen). Sixty years ago, Dausset first discovered that sera from patients with leukopenia or from patients who had received multiple blood transfusions were capable of agglutinating 56–100% of leukocytes from normal donors. The discovery preluded a massive international collaboration for investigation of the HLA system. Furthermore, also in 1958, independent studies by Rose Payne and Jon van Rood found that the sera from some parous women con‐ tained leukocyte antibodies. A subsequent study by van Rood used a computer-assisted statistical method to establish an HLA antisera cluster analysis method and identified the HLA-Bw4/6 antigen. In addition, in the early- and mid-1960s, a series of major break‐ throughs by scientists from many international collaborative laboratories, combined with the discoveries outlined above, confirmed that humans and mice have the same major histo‐ compatibility complex system, called HLA and H-2, respectively, thus providing a perfect ending to the journey of HLA discovery. The entire history of HLA research involves great international and inter-disciplinary collaborations. World experts in HLA research collabo‐ rated closely; shared experience, discoveries, and valuable antisera; and unified experimen‐ tal techniques and nomenclatures. Through frequent conferences, laboratories in different countries formed massive international collaborations and thereby greatly accelerated the

It should be emphasized that although human HLA and mouse H-2 belong to the MHC sys‐ tem, the discoveries of these two systems did not have a consequential or causal relation‐ ship. This is because the study of the mouse H-2 system relied mainly on serological analysis of mouse red blood cells, whereas the discovery of the human HLA system was based on the finding that sera from leukopenia patients contained leukoagglutinin. Just as Dausset described in *"The HLA Adventure"* in 1990, "It would not, however, be altogether accurate to claim that the HLA pioneers were stimulated by the H-2 model to seek a coun‐ terpart in man. In actually, the effort to study men and mice progressed quite independently

HLA is by far the most complex and polymorphic human gene system ever discovered. Since the first official naming by HLA Nomenclature Committee of the World Health Or‐ ganization in 1968 and with the rapid advances in molecular biology techniques, many new HLA and HLA-related alleles have been discovered each year. As of January 2014, more

discovery of the HLA system and progress in the field.

of each other for many years."

