APHIA 2026 JOINT CONFERENCE OF THE 19TH INTERNATIONAL HISTOCOMPATIBILITY WORKSHOP – “DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INNOVATION”
| 1600 – 1700 | APHIA Council Meeting |
| 1600 – 1730 | REGISTRATION OPENS |
| 1730 – 1830 | OPENING CEREMONY |
| Prof Nada Hamad Equity with an intersectional lens in Bone Marrow Transplantation | |
| 1830 – 2030 | WELCOME COCKTAILS |
| Registration Open | |
| 0830 – 0920 | HAEMATOPOIETIC CELL TRANSPLANTATION PLENARY SESSION 1 |
| 0830 – 0855 | Prof Effie Petersdorf – Immunogenetics of Allogeneic Transplantation |
| 0855 – 0920 | Dr Dianne De Santis – Beyond Classical HLA: Do Extended MHC Haplotypes Influence Transplant Immunogenetics? |
| 0920 – 0950 | ABSTRACT SESSION 1 |
| 0920 – 0930 | Carmel O’Brien – Immunogenetic Population Modelling and HLA Match Likelihoods in the Australian and New Zealand HCT Donor Registries |
| 0930 – 0940 | Heather Dunckley – The impact of HLA diversity on equity of unrelated donor haematopoietic cell transplantation in New Zealand |
| 0940 – 0950 | Tengteng Zhang – Differential clinical impact of HLA-DPA1~DPB1 linkage mismatches in 14/14-matched unrelated donor HSCT: a multicenter retrospective study from CMDP revealing age- and disease-specific risk patterns |
| 0950 – 1020 | COFFEE AND TEA BREAK |
| 1020 – 1135 | HAEMATOPOIETIC CELL TRANSPLANTATION PLENARY SESSION 2 |
| 1020 – 1045 | Prof Medhat Askar – A strategic systems thinking topic: The Global Minimal Standards for Histocompatibility Testing: Democratization of Best Practices |
| 1045 – 1110 | Prof Luca Vago – Mechanisms of Immune Escape and Relapse after allogeneic HCT |
| 1110 – 1135 | Prof Nada Hamad – Advancing EDI in BMT: From Principles to Practice |
| 1135 – 1150 | WERFEN Abstract |
| 1150 – 1235 | WERFEN Symposium: Elevating HLA Confidence: Where High Resolution Science Meets Real Time Impact Speakers: Dr. Ramona Chopra, Lisa Waltham, Young Seo |
| 1235 – 1335 | LUNCH BREAK |
| 1335 – 1425 | CELLULAR THERAPY PLENARY SESSION 3 |
| 1335 – 1400 | Prof Nattiya Hirankarn – Advancing the Frontiers of Immunotherapy: HLA-Restricted NeoAg Vaccines and CAR T-Cell Innovation in Cancer and SLE |
| 1400 – 1425 | Prof Suradej Hongeng – Real experience of locally produced CAR T cells and the future of cancer immunotherapy with circular mRNA |
| 1425 – 1430 | DKMS Vendor Pitch |
| 1430 – 1545 | IMMUNOGENETICS PLENARY SESSION 4 |
| 1430 – 1455 | Dr Uma Kanga – Long non coding RNAs and non classical HLA: possible markers to predict rejection |
| 1455 – 1520 | Prof Paul Norman – Polymorphic interactions of natural killer cell receptors with HLA-peptide complexes |
| 1520 – 1545 | Dr Ritu Aggarwal – Beyond the Classical: The Role of Non-Classical HLA Molecules in Cancer |
| 1545 – 1615 | COFFEE AND TEA BREAK |
| 1615 – 1630 | GenDx Presentation/Vendor Pitch |
| 1630 – 1730 | TX MILLER STUDENT AWARD Abstract Session |
| 1630 – 1645 | Rachel Cassar – Enhancing HLA antibody assessment in sensitized patients using AXE adsorption and elution method |
| 1545 – 1700 | Emmett Wong – The Synergistic Impact of Combined HLA-DR and HLA-DQ De Novo Donor-Specific Antibodies on Rejection |
| 1700 – 1715 | Matthew Glasenapp – HLA-Resolve: High-Resolution HLA Haplotyping from Long-Read Hybrid Capture |
| 1715 – 1730 | Rakshit Rakshit – Prevalence of HLA Phenotypes in a Cohort of North-West India and Their Association with End-Stage Renal Disease |
| 1730 – 1900 | WINE & CHEESE POSTER SESSION |
| 1930 – 2200 | INVITED SPEAKERS DINNER |
| Registration Open | |
| 0830 – 0920 | SOLID ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION PLENARY SESSION 5 |
| 0830 – 0855 | Assoc Prof Lloyd D’Orsogna |
| 0855 – 0920 | Narelle Watson – OrganMatch – The digital backbone of the Australian Transplant System |
| 0920 – 0950 | ABSTRACT SESSION 2 |
| 0920 – 0930 | Nuchjarnun Choktaweesak – From Bench to Bedside: Evaluating Oxford Nanopore HLA Typing and Its Correlation with Graft Rejection in Kidney Transplant Recipients |
| 0930 – 0940 | Wathsala Munasinghe – Impact of Australian kidney allocation algorithm changes on northern territory renal transplant recipient outcomes |
| 0940 – 0950 | Inseong Oh – Prediction Models for Kidney Graft Outcomes Integrating Pre-Transplant Non-HLA Antibody Panels |
| 0950 – 1020 | COFFEE AND TEA BREAK |
| 1020 – 1135 | SOLID ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION PLENARY SESSION 6 |
| 1020 – 1045 | Assoc Prof Lucy Sullivan – Non-HLA Antibody Testing: Still a Research Tool or Ready for Prime Time? |
| 1045 – 1110 | Dr Eric Spierings – Molecular Matching: The Epitope Pathway to Equity in Transplantation |
| 1110 – 1135 | Prof Raja Rajalingam – Innovative Histocompatibility Strategies Enhance Equity and Efficiency in Kidney Allocation: Evidence from 10-Year Outcomes of 2,600 Transplants |
| 1135 – 1205 | CareDx: AlloSeq Nano: HLA and ABO Genotyping in a Single Assay by Long-Read Sequencing for Robust and Rapid Results |
| 1205 – 1235 | ABSTRACT SESSION 3 |
| 1205 – 1215 | Cassandra Kennedy – Desensitisation of a highly sensitised cardiac patient with daratumumab: the laboratory experience |
| 1215 – 1225 | Samuel Robinson – HLA-KIR Interactions Protect Against Chronic Lung Allograft Dysfunction After Lung Transplantation |
| 1225 – 1325 | LUNCH BREAK |
| 1325 – 1410 | ONE LAMBDA/THERMOFISHER SYMPOSIUM |
| 1410 – 1425 | ONE LAMBDA/THERMOFISHER Abstract |
| 1425 – 1515 | IMMUNOGENETICS PLENARY SESSION 7 |
| 1425 – 1450 | Dr Anne Halpin – ABO histocompatibility: Tools for immune risk assessment |
| 1450 – 1515 | Dr Surakameth Mahasirimongkol – How Thailand’s PGx Strategy is Saving Lives at Scale |
| 1515 – 1535 | ABSTRACT SESSION 4 |
| 1515 – 1525 | Eun-Suk Kang – Prediction of Post-transplantation Outcome Using Epitope Matching Technology |
| 1525 – 1535 | Dianne De Santis – Simultaneous HLA and ABO A1/A2 Genotyping Using Rapid Oxford Nanopore Sequencing in Deceased Organ Donors |
| 1535 – 1605 | COFFEE AND TEA BREAK |
| 1605 – 1615 | TBG BIOTECHNOLOGY VENDOR PITCH |
| 1615 – 1705 | INFECTION AND IMMUNITY PLENARY SESSION 8 |
| 1615 – 1640 | Dr Nicole Mifsud – The immunopeptidomic landscape in transplantation |
| 1640 – 1705 | Dr Katsushi Tokunaga – Genomic Variants and Disease Associations |
| 1705 – 1725 | ABSTRACT SESSION 5 |
| 1705 – 1715 | You Min Ahn – First molecular insight into HLA-C contribution to COVID-19 outcome |
| 1715 – 1725 | Silvana Gaudieri – The impact of accumulating immune adaptation in circulating strains of HIV-1 in Western Australia |
| 1845 | Bus transfer to conference dinner |
| 1900 – 2200 | CONFERENCE DINNER |
| 0830 – 0945 | BIOINFORMATICS PLENARY SESSION 9 |
| 0830 – 0855 | Dr James Robinson – HLA Bioinformatics; Navigating increasing complexity and volume |
| 0855 – 0920 | Dr Kazutoyo Osoegawa – HLA Serotypes |
| 0920 – 0945 | Dr Nicholas Brown – Informatics tools for clinical HLA laboratory data |
| 0945 – 1005 | ABSTRACT SESSION 6 |
| 0945 – 0955 | Omar Cornejo – Ancestry analysis of International Histocompatibility Working Group cell lines: beyond geographic labels |
| 0955 – 1005 | Junyu Deng – HLA-DAP: A standardized framework for global synthesis of HLA-disease associations |
| 1005 – 1035 | COFFEE AND TEA BREAK |
| 1035 – 1100 | BIOINFORMATICS PLENARY SESSION 10 |
| 1035 – 1100 | Dr Pierre-Antoine Gourraud – From HLA to Biomedical Data warehouse: an unexpected journey in data-driven medicine |
| 1100 – 1120 | ABSTRACT SESSION 7 |
| 1100 – 1110 | Dianne De Santis – HLAhaploTools: A Bioinformatics Suite for Comprehensive Analysis of Classical and Non-Classical HLA Haplotypes in Extended Families |
| 1110 – 1120 | James Robinson – Simplifying IPD-IMGT/HLA Database submission: data brokering with the European Nucleotide Archive |
| 1120 – 1220 | BEST ABSTRACT SESSION |
| 1120 – 1135 | Kulvara Kittisares – Mining HLA-DM-Sensitive HLA-DP-Alloreactive TCR for Cellular Immunotherapy of Leukemia |
| 1135 – 1150 | Vinicius Stelet – Explainable Machine Learning Decodes Age Thresholds and Heterogeneous Survival Dynamics in 16,458 Hematologic Malignancy Patients undergoing Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation |
| 1150 – 1205 | Jacob Shujui Hsu – High-resolution T Cell Receptor Allele Typing in Biobank-scale Whole-genome Sequencing |
| 1205 – 1220 | Nicholas Pollock – Creating fully representative MHC reference haplotypes |
| 1220 – 1230 | CLOSING CEREMONY |