In Attendance:
Present: Glenys Thomson, Derek Middleton, Jill Hollenbach, Steven Mack, Wolfgang Helmberg, Martin Maiers, Myoung Hee Park, Pierre-Antoine Gourraud, Marcelo Fernandez-Vina
Guests: Allen Norrin and Amy Han, ASHI Scientific and Clinical Affairs Committee
The minutes from the September 23 IDAWG meeting were reviewed and accepted.
Agenda items:
1 - IDAWG as a subcommittee of the ASHI Scientific and Clinical Affairs committee
The working group is now a subcommittee of the ASHI Scientific and Clinical Affairs (SCAC) committee, with Derek Middleton serving as our ASHI Liaison. Steve Mack and Jill Hollenbach will represent the working group on the SCAC. We discussed ways in which the working group could work with ASHI, and the possibility of developing similar relationships with EFI and ASEATTA. We recognized the need for open genotype-data-management standards that could serve both the clinical and research communities. The ultimate goal of these data-management standards is to avoid the loss of information about genotypes, and to maximize the utility of genotype data for future applications.
In particular, we concluded that there was a need for standard approaches to:
2 - Reporting Standards for Immunogenomic Studies
We discussed the need to expand the STREGA statement to develop reporting guidelines specific to immunogenomic studies. While STREGA could be generally applicable to immunogenomic studies, we concluded that an immunogenomic-specific minimum information standard similar to the Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) standard, which describes the minimum information necessary to allow the interpretation and reproduction of microarray studies, could be developed for immunogenomic studies. These reporting standards would pertain to data-management methods, and would emphasize the need for discussions in the literature of what was done to genotype data after they were generated and before they were analyzed, as well as to data-analysis methods. We recognized that these guidelines would need the support of the accrediting organizations and the key journals in the field to be effective.
3 - Tissue Antigens Commentary outline
We discussed the outline of the proposed commentary, and discussed members of the working group writing specific sections. Rich Single, Jill Hollenbach, Pierre-Antoine Gourraud, Steve Mack, Glenys Thomson, Derek Middleton, Myoung Hee Park, Martin Maiers, and Wolfgang Helmberg have agreed to contribute to the commentary.
4 - Rules for Recording HLA Ambiguities
We discussed the EFI guidelines forrecording HLA ambiguities (Tiercy et. al. (2002) Guidelines for nomenclature useage in HLA reports: ambiguities and conversion to serotypes Eur J Immunogenet 29(3):273-4.), and determined that the working group could produce an updated set of guidelines. Martin Maiers suggested that a WMDA commentary on reporting ambiguities would be instructive in developing updated guidelines (Bochtler et. al.(2007) World Marrow Donor Association guidelines for use of HLA nomenclature and its validation in the data exchange among hematopoietic stem cell donor registries and cord blood banks Bone Marrow Transplantation 39: 737-741.).
5 - ANTT and UNCL
We discussed the ANTT and UNCL tools for updating HLA allele names to the new colon-delimited nomenclature. In particular, discussion focused on the potential for extending these tools to apply to NMDP codes, and the large number of potential allele-family and NMDP code combinations.
6 - 16th Workshop Project
We discussed developing a common data-analysis project as part of the 16th International HLA and Immunogenetics Workshop, integrating efforts with groups with similar goals (e.g., HLA-NET, HIEDFS (HLA Data Information Exchange Format Standards Group)).
At this point, the meeting adjourned.
Items not discussed:
KIR meeting report/summary
Funding update
ASEATTA IDAWG meeting