Collaborative Transplant Study

In 1982, Gerhard Opelz, at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), launched the Collaborative Transplant Study (CTS), an international collaborative program involving a large number of transplant groups and tissue typing laboratories. The data collected through CTS clearly demonstrated an important effect of HLA matching on kidney graft survival. The CTS has been a great source of very important information on factors influencing long-term graft survival following organ transplantation.