Relevance of KIR gene matching in unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplantations

The aim of this collaborative study was to evaluate the impact of killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) gene disparities on unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCT) outcome. To address this question, we have determined the presence or absence of 14 functional KIR genes in HLA-matched (n = 164) or HLA-mismatched (n = 100) donor/recipient pairs and investigated whether KIR gene disparities had an impact on both the occurrence of acute graft-vs-host-disease incidence and overall survival. In a univariate analysis, our preliminary results suggest a detrimental effect of a few KIR gene disparities on patient survival that should be avoided in unrelated HSCT.