Clinical Transplantation Laboratory at Guy's Hospital

Laboratory overview

We are a UKAS accredited medical laboratory no.9568 and have been based at Guy’s Hospital for over 30 years. We have been internationally accredited by the European Federation for Immunogenetics since 2008.

Peter Gorer, who trained at Guy's and spent most of his working life there since 1940, was the first person to describe transplantation antigens and formulate an immunological theory of transplantation. He has been described as 'the father of histocompatibility antigens'. The first renal transplantation in the South Thames region was performed at Guy's Hospital in May 1967.

We now provide a comprehensive service in support of renal and pancreas transplantation to all the South Thames area adult renal units and all the London area paediatric renal units. We facilitate islet, small bowel and liver transplantation in the Liver Unit at King’s College Hospital. In addition we support the Haematology stem cell transplantation service with HLA typing and donor searches.

Key features:

• As HLA antigens vary widely between individuals and dictate their immune repertoire we provide a comprehensive ‘HLA and Disease Association’ service. This includes well-known associations for diagnostic purposes and the development of therapies and vaccines optimised for differences in the populations immune response.
• The laboratory is nationally recognised for its innovation and support for all aspects of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics
• We have a bespoke approach to service provision to allow a seamless integration of our service with clinical practice
• We are the busiest renal transplantation laboratory in the UK, facilitating 350 renal transplants per year.
• Our national specialism is antibody incompatible transplantation, both ABO and HLA. We have developed a highly successful approach to enable renal and stem cell transplantation in the face of donor HLA specific antibody
• Our on-call team is exceptional and provides a 3hr turn around time for a deceased donor crossmatch 24/7. Similarly HLA typing, including HLA*DPB1, has a turn around time of 4 hours.

Our customers include Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals, King’s College Hospital, St. George’s Hospital Transplant Unit, St. Helier Hospital Renal Unit, Royal Sussex County Hospital Renal Unit, Kent and Canterbury Hospitals Renal Units, Evelina Children’s Hospital Renal Unit, Great Ormond Street Hospital Renal Unit, Jersey General Hospital Renal Unit, Princess Elizabeth Hospital, Guernsey Renal Unit, General Practitioners and International referrals for HLA and ABOi transplantation.

EFI Accredited. Laboratory reference: 03-GB-013.987