[Unrelated bone marrow transplantation b. Bone Marrow Donor Registry. Nagoya Bone Marrow Transplantation Group].

Tokai Bone Marrow Donor Registry was established to facilitate unrelated bone marrow transplantations in Japan. Although the basic structure was constructed, the number of donors must be expanded and financial problems must be solved. More bone marrow donor registries are likely to be established in the near future throughout Japan, and those will be anticipated to become a nationwide bone marrow donor registry. The HLA identity between unrelated individuals is unique in that it is only phenotypically identical and not genotypically identical. Therefore, for the HLA matching, not only serological typing of donors and recipients but molecular and biochemical methods would be employed to facilitate the analysis of the degree of the HLA identity to be more precise. Those methods include HLA-DP DNA typing and IEF analysis of HLA-class 1 antigens.