HLA class II diversity in HIV-1 uninfected individuals from the placebo arm of the RV144 Thai vaccine efficacy trial

The RV144 HIV vaccine trial in Thailand elicited antibody responses to the envelope of HIV-1, which correlated significantly with the risk of HIV-1 acquisition. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II molecules are essential in antigen presentation to CD4 T cells for activation of B cells to produce antibodies. We genotyped the classical HLA-DRB1, DQB1, and DPB1 genes in 450 individuals from the placebo arm of the RV144 study to determine the background allele and haplotype frequencies of these genes in this cohort. High-resolution 4 and 6-digit class II HLA typing data was generated using sequencing-based methods. The observed diversity for the HLA loci was 33 HLA-DRB1, 15 HLA-DQB1, and 26 HLA-DPB1 alleles. Common alleles with frequencies greater than 10% were DRB1*07:01, DRB1*09:01, DRB1*12:02, DRB1*15:02, DQB1*02:01/02, DQB1*03:01, DQB1*03:03, DQB1*05:01, DQB1*05:02, DPB1*04:01:01, DPB1*05:01:01, and DPB1*13:01:01. We identified 28 rare alleles with frequencies of less than 1% in the Thai individuals. Ambiguity for HLA-DPB1*28:01 in exon 2 was resolved to DPB1*296:01 by next-generation sequencing of all exons. Multi-locus haplotypes including HLA class I and II loci were reported in this study. This is the first comprehensive report of allele and haplotype frequencies of all three HLA class II genes from a Thai population. A high-resolution genotyping method such as next-generation sequencing avoids missing rare alleles and resolves ambiguous calls. The HLA class II genotyping data generated in this study will be beneficial not only for future disease association/vaccine efficacy studies related to the RV144 study, but also for similar studies in other diseases in the Thai population, as well as population genetics and transplantation studies.