Establishment of an HLA-typed cohort of 1000 healthy blood donors and use of a dendritic cell priming assay to prime naive T cells to structurally divergent drugs

Background The mechanisms involved in the etiology of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are complex. A small proportion of ADRs are due to drug hypersensitivity where the immune response causes an unexpected and severe clinical reaction. The mechanisms of drug hypersensitivity are not yet fully understood, but genome wide screens have identified an association with HLA alleles and certain drugs. Furthermore, functional studies have identified drugresponsive T-cells in blood and tissues of hypersensitive patients. Thus, the frequency and severity of a reaction is a function of the chemistry of the drug, the biology of the immune cell and the genotype of the individual.