THE OLERUP SSP® PRODUCT LINE CONTINUES TO BE IN THE FOREFRONT OF HLA TYPING

"With this newsletter we at Olerup SSP AB wish to welcome both old and new customers to a new and exciting year together with us! In this newsletter we describe three changes that are being introduced to the Olerup SSP® product line during the first half of 2012", says Anna Hedlund, Head of Research & Development at Olerup SSP AB.

"Olerup SSP AB has been pioneering our field of expertise for 20 years", she continues. When the Olerup SSP® products were first introduced in 1992 it was the first commercially available HLA-SSP typing product. We have thereafter been in the forefront of HLA typing and we are proud to present our most recent product developments that are now ready to be released to the market.

The changes involve a new version of our supporting software, Helmberg- SCORE™, new formats of our low resolution typing kits and a refocus of our high resolution kit updating strategy."

INTRODUCING THE HELMBERG-SCORE™ 5.x.T

Helmberg-SCORE™ has been the supportive software of Olerup SSP® typing kits since 1998. The program has, in close cooperation with Olerup SSP AB, been in constant development by the creator Assoc. Professor Wolfgang Helmberg. This development has over the years ensured Olerup SSP® and Helmberg-SCORE™ users to continuously be able to have a sophisticated and up-to-date software solution that has always been able to meet the developments within the HLA field. "The bottom line is to facilitate HLA typing for our users and to be able to handle the continuously expanding world of HLA alleles in a smart and practical way", says Hedlund.

Now, in January 2012, Olerup SSP® Helmberg- SCORE™ version 5.x.T, is being globally released. The new version is based on ACCESS 2007 and it has quite a number of unique new features exclusive to Olerup SSP® users. Olerup SSP AB will continue to support SCORE 4 until end of March giving users a reasonable time to shift to the new version.

For the basic user there will be a shortcut setting available with a clean interface, ensuring an easy workflow when going from patient/sample entry to typing result and report. With a a single click the more sophisticated user will be able go from the shortcut setting to the standard setting, which features the full range of tools that the software currently offers.

Moreover, features have been added to further facilitate in result handling and to help reduce ambiguities. Firstly, a striking new feature is the capability to handle fragment size analysis in lanes with multiple band lengths. This is a software functionality achievement that reflects the full capacity of the Olerup SSP® kit design and it will ensure that users make the most of entered typing results and reduce ambiguities when interpreting results.

Secondly, P- and G group nomenclature is now also available in result handling and reports as a way to sort or reduce different kinds of ambiguities due to polymorphisms located outside of regions encoding the peptide binding domains.

"The new features of Helmberg-SCORE™ that are now being introduced will further improve user friendliness and at the same time support the full potential of multiplex HLA sequence analysis" says Helmberg.

NEW FORMAT CHANGE IMPROVING LOW RESOLUTION TYPING

"It is a well known fact that the number of new alleles are growing at a pace that classic low res typing kits have not been able to keep up with unless making unnecessary compromises in the level of resolution. Therefore, Olerup SSP AB has made an important move to improve the resolution of our low res HLA typing kits. With a significant increase in the level of genotype resolution yielding general kit functionality improvement, the new formats of our HLA-A, -B, -C, and DR low resolution kits as described in table 1 are now being introduced", says Anna Hedlund

In an in-house study a comparison between the classic and the extended format of the Olerup SSP® HLA-A, -B, and -DRB low resolution kits showed that by using the new formats the number of ambiguities was significantly lower (Table 2). The study was performed on 102 randomly selected Swedish blood donors and 102 consecutive UCLA Exchange DNAs. The most current lots of the "classic format" and new, extended format of Olerup low resolution SSP® typing kits for HLA-A, -B and -DRB were used and analysis was performed by using Olerup SSP® version of Helmberg-SCORE™, allele database 3.5.0.

"The low resolution format changes will enable improved genotype resolution and allow complete allele coverage as future databases are released. With the implementation of these changes the Olerup SSP® product line continues to offer a range of high quality and functional low resolution kits that reflect our commitment to our customers", Hedlund concludes.

The new improved low resolution typing kits will replace the classic formats subsequently during the first half of the year.

OLERUP SSP® STRATEGY FOR HIGH RESOLUTION TYPING KIT UPDATES

During 2012 the kit and primer design updates of the HLA-A, -B, -C and -DRB1 Olerup SSP® high resolution kits are gradually going to be re-focused to confirmed alleles, alternatively expressed alleles and other types of polymorphisms that are strategically important to be able to resolve with SSP. Confirmed alleles are alleles that have been sequenced by more than a single laboratory or from multiple sources (cells, DNA) and are listed as confirmed in the IMGT/HLA database.

The strategy for the kit and primer design updates of Olerup SSP® high resolution kits for HLA-DQB1, -DQA1, -DPB1 and -DPA1 loci will be maintained in today's form.

"It is important for us as a company to convey our kit design strategy in a precise and transparent way over to our end-users. Today, given the vast number of increases in new HLA alleles, we find it reasonable to focus updates with regards to the HLA-A, -B, -C and -DRB1 loci to confirmed alleles. Thus, this is the way the high resolution kits for these loci will be updated from here on", Anna Hedlund concludes.

For information, please contact:
Lars Öqvist, Director Marketing
E-mail lars.oqvist@absorber.se, mobil +46 (0) 766 276 550.