In Attendance:
Present: Wolfgang Helmberg, Jill Hollenbach, Steven Mack, Steven Marsh, Derek Middleton
Guest: James Robinson, Anthony Nolan Research Institute
Agenda Items
1. IDAWG 16th Workshop Projects
We discussed using a series of web-based surveys to collect information about current practices in HLA and KIR data generation, management, and analysis. Initially, the idea proposed was to collect two separate surveys, one asking questions about data-management practices, and a second asking about ambiguity-resolution practices, but it quickly became clear that these would be best combined into a single survey, with the ambiguity component contingent on the answers to the data-management section.
The survey will be made available in early 2011, and collection would continue up until and during the Workshop meeting in 2012. The goal of the survey is to get a "top down" view of what is being done in the immunogenetic community as far as data-generation, -management and –analysis goes. The results of the survey would inform the development of reporting guidelines as well as software tools to facilitate data-sharing.
We recognized the potential of a lack of concern about these issues (data-management and analysis, ambiguity reduction, etc.) in the community, derived in part about a lack of time to think about them, as well as a lack of any need to think about them due to the extent to which many labs' data management practices are partially automated.
But we also recognized that there is probably a desire in the community to categorize the various practices that are in use, summarizing what was done in each case, so that references can be made to them in a general, community-wide manner. We discussed the ASHI Harmonization Document in this context, and the prospect of having the IDAWG make comments on it. There was consensus that the prospect of standards and harmonization benefitting accreditation would be an incentive to participate.
We concluded by discussing the need for the standards committees of the various histocompatibility and immunogenetics societies to be involved in distributing the survey to their constituent laboratories, and for the journals and their reviewers to be involved on requiring reporting standards.
2. Tissue Antigens Commentary
We discussed the draft of the manuscript, which was lacking in suggestions for solutions to the challenges outlined. We agreed that if some sort of reporting guidelines had been in place for the previous few decades of immunogenetic research, we would have a much better idea of what work had actually be done, in terms of which alleles had and had not been tested for, and which more recently identified alleles could or could not have been detected.
We agreed that the methods sections of manuscripts should document the manner in which the data have been managed and processed in the same level of detail as the procedures applied in sample collection and DNA extraction and amplification are documented. This returned the discussion to the survey, one outcome of which could be a vocabulary for discussing these data management and processing procedures, and again for the need of the support of journals and reviewers.
We agreed to make some recommendations for reporting guidelines, and to invite comment, as a way to start a community dialogue.
Examples included requiring raw-data to be deposited online.
3. 2010 APHIA Meeting
Brian Tait had indicated that there was an opportunity for an IDAWG presentation at the 2010 APHIA meeting in Queenstown, New Zealand. We determined that Marin Maiers would be attending that meeting, and resolved to see if he could do the presentation.