{
  "abstract": "Alloimmunization to red blood cell (RBC) antigens remains a major barrier to safe transfusion, particularly for chronically transfused patients, because compatible antigen-negative units are difficult to source from conventional donor inventories and demand for rare phenotypes is increasing. This study aimed to quantify the minimum size of an O RhD-negative (O-negative) human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)–derived RBC clone bank needed to cover alloimmunized transfusion recipients in a Saudi population and to provide a quantitative framework for prioritizing candidate clones based on real-world alloantibody frequencies and antigen-negativity constraints. Retrospective antibody-screening/identification data from 3,719 patients (185 screen-positive) and phenotyping data from 100 donors were analyzed; matching was restricted to 14 unique O-negative donor phenotypes as candidate clones. Antibody-identification text was normalized with a case-sensitive dictionary preserving paired antigens (e.g., C/c, E/e, K/k, S/s), and patient–clone compatibility required negativity for every antigen targeted by a patient’s alloantibodies. A strict set-cover optimization was solved using a greedy cumulative coverage heuristic and validated by exact binary integer linear programming (ILP) in R. Among 153 matchable positive-screen patients, 190 antibody-specificity occurrences were identified, dominated by anti-E (24.21%), anti-K (23.16%), anti-D (17.37%), and anti-c (7.89%). Across candidate clones, none was c-, e-, or k-negative; clone 57 provided the highest standalone coverage (83.66%). Greedy selection (57, 10, 9) achieved a coverage plateau at 134/153 (87.58%), and ILP confirmed three clones as the global minimum to attain the maximum achievable coverage; relative to all 185 screen-positive patients, coverage was 72.43%. Nineteen matchable patients were incompatible with all clones, largely driven by anti-c (15/19). These findings support a small, optimized hiPSC-RBC clone bank for broad coverage, while identifying anti-c–driven gaps that motivate expanded donor genotyping/phenotyping and targeted RHCE editing (e.g., CRISPR) alongside experimental work on differentiation, enucleation, antigen-expression stability, epigenetic regulation, immune safety, and cost-effectiveness. Code is publicly available (Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22123689 ) under IRB approval (IRB-2017-03-79).",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Amani Y. Owaidah",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-5224-175X"
    },
    {
      "name": "Nora Y. Aljindan"
    },
    {
      "name": "Noor M. Naffaa"
    },
    {
      "name": "Mohamed Belhocine"
    },
    {
      "name": "Faisal M. Alzahrani"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/crybzana1tjgg.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1038/s41598-026-74133-y",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "crybzana1tjgg",
  "issns": [
    "2045-2322"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-74133-y",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2720|Blood groups and transfusion"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7218690804",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-74133-y_reference.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-03",
  "publisher": "Springer Science and Business Media LLC",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/crybzana1tjgg.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:22Z",
      "native_id": "10.1038/s41598-026-74133-y",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-74133-y"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "openalex:2720|Blood groups and transfusion",
      "subfield": "general"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Computational optimization of hiPSC-derived red blood cell clone banks for alloimmunized patients in a saudi population",
  "title_text": "Computational optimization of hiPSC-derived red blood cell clone banks for alloimmunized patients in a saudi population",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:22Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/crybzana1tjgg",
  "venue": "Scientific Reports",
  "versions": []
}