Renal transplantation of RT1-B-matched, RT1-A-mismatched rats

While our results clearly demonstrate that RT1-B locus matching alone is not sufficient to ensure allograft success, they do not disprove the hypothesis that anti-Ia antibodies are of primary importance in immunologic enhancement. KGH and LEW differ by at least one Ia-like locus (Ia¹). Active and passive immunization against gene products of this region may be primarily responsible for the immunologic enhancement demonstrated. That immunization against RT1-A products is of equal or greater importance cannot be disproved by these results. Further studies addressed to this issue in these and other models are presently in progress in our laboratory.