MARCo: An Interactive Web-Based Tool for Comprehensive Evaluation of HLA Antibody Reactivity in Luminex Single Antigen Bead Assays.

Authors

João Henrique Coelho Campos, Gustavo Vinícius Alves, Alberto Cardoso Martins Lima, Maria Gerbase-DeLima, Renato de Marco

Published in

HLA. Volume 108. Issue 5.

Abstract

Evaluating HLA antibody reactivity is essential in clinical transplantation, but it can be complicated by analytical issues related to Luminex single-antigen bead (SAB) assays. These challenges include interpreting mean fluorescence intensity (MFI), variations across platforms and false-negative and false-positive reactions. In this regard, we developed the MARCo (Molecular Antigen Reactivity Correlation) platform, an interactive bioinformatic tool designed for multi-dimensional analysis of HLA antibody reactivity. MARCo is based on a dataset of 70,955 SAB results derived from distinct patients' sera, covering panels from both One Lambda/Thermo Fisher and Immucor/Werfen. In its main screen, MARCo features: (I) A scatter plot displaying MFI data with user-defined reactivity cutoffs; (II) Details on serological correlation statistics, including the linear equation, R² and Spearman's correlation results; (III) serological assignments using the HATS (HLA Allele to Serotype) methodology; and (IV) quantification of total and solvent-exposed amino acid mismatches using the HLA-EMMA algorithm. The tool also provides a Correlation Matrix module that contains interactive heatmaps to visualise reactivity relationships across all HLA loci. By combining correlations with structural and serological data, MARCo enables nuanced interpretation of complex HLA antibody profiles, facilitates investigation of structure-antigenic relationships and helps clarify platform-specific assay behaviours. Moreover, MARCo may also be used to explore potential novel determining epitopes to refine the newly approved serological nomenclature further. Altogether, this web platform offers a robust and integrated research environment that combines MFI, serological and molecular data. MARCo platform is freely available for research use only at https://www.igen.org.br/marco/.

PMID:
42989686
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 06 Nov 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.