Wiktionary
n. (context medicine English) A procedure in which the tissues of a prospective donor and recipient are tested for compatibility prior to transplantation
WordNet
n. a series of diagnostic tests before an organ transplant to determine whether the tissues of a donor and recipient are compatible
Wikipedia
Tissue typing is a procedure in which the tissues of a prospective donor and recipient are tested for compatibility prior to transplantation. An embryo can be tissue typed to ensure that the embryo implanted can be a cord-blood stem cell donor for a sick sibling.
One technique of tissue typing, "mixed leukocyte reaction", is performed by culturing lymphocytes from the donor together with those from the recipient.
Another technique, known as a micro-cytotoxicity assay, utilizes serum with known anti-HLA antibodies that recognize particular HLA loci (HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-C, HLA-DP, HLA-DQ, HLA-DR) in order to match genetically similar individuals in hopes of performing a tissue transplantation. In this technique a donor's blood cells are MHC typed by mixing them with serum containing the anti-HLA antibodies. If the antibodies recognize their epitope on the MHC then complement activation occurs and the cell will be osmotically lysed. Lysis results in the cell taking up a dye ( trypan blue). This allows identification of cell's MHC indirectly based on the specificity of the known antibodies in the serum.
Usage examples of "tissue typing".
When the charge was made, Amos had taken the trouble to verify the police report: Raff had been released uncharged because tissue typing had shown he could not have been the rapist.
She thought again about how he had caused her to disregard the tissue typing done on the coma patients.
Sure, in a pinch--and usually it is a pinch--you can go on just blood type, but there are four other factors in tissue typing.