[Luminex technology for HLA typing by PCR-SSO and identification of HLA antibody specificities]

Luminex technology is a new flow cytometry technology enabling us to analyse numerous reactions in a unique tube or well. It is a multiplexed data acquisition and analysis platform of microsphere-based assays that performs simultaneous measurements of up to 100 different analytes. In the histo- compatibility field, individual sets of microspheres are modified with reactive components such as antigens in order to perform HLA antibodies identification, or with oligonucleotides in order to perform HLA typing after reverse PCR-SSO. Thus microspheres are the equivalent of a panel of HLA typed lymphocytes (for PRA determination and antibody identification) or equivalent to a large set of probes selected to assign HLA typing. This new tool can be very useful in HLA laboratories since it is very easy to use and the results are concordant with those obtained with reference technics.