Need to overcome the information deluge and efficiently perform complex analyses of high-content data? Or to share your data and analyses with colleagues? Or to visualize quality control trends over time?
The LabKey Server open source platform now supports management, analysis, quality control, and secure sharing of data from multiplexed immunoassays that leverage Luminex xMAP® technology. LabKey Server is freely available and includes extensive documentation, tutorials and community support forums.
For details, see the new, open-access paper in BMC Bioinformatics: Quality control, analysis and secure sharing of Luminex® immunoassay data using the open source LabKey Server system.
A brief overview…
Multiplexed immunoassays are now frequently used to gauge immune responses during clinical trials. As you know, assays like this produce a hefty, complex payload of information for each sample run.
Quality control for multiplexed assays is tricky. QC must be performed across a long list of dimensions – across samples, wells, beads, reagents, and more. But robust quality controls are essential to ensure that assay results are accurate, reproducible, and consistent across runs.
Data analysis poses another hurdle. Not only are results voluminous and complex, but analytical techniques (particularly curve fits) are still evolving.
Secure information sharing can also raise challenges. For complex assays, scientists located at different sites may need to collaborate around intermediate quality control and analytical information, not just exchange a one-time “data dump” of results.
Integrated software like LabKey Server can help teams manage, analyze, and securely share results, analyses, and quality control information. Software that makes data exchange easier and provides flexibility to perform custom analyses can increase scientists’ capacity to use these immunoassays to evaluate clinical trials.
LabKey Server’s new support for Luminex tools can help with a variety of common scenarios:
- Curve-fit gurus can customize fit algorithms in R while still presenting users with an accessible, graphical interface that standardizes data processing and analysis.
- Users can view all of their team’s data across all runs in one place, where they can perform quality control, extend analyses, create reports, view summary dashboards, etc.
- Scientific teams can smooth collaboration by using an installation of LabKey Server as a shared research portal, as shown in the figure below.
Software installers and source code are freely available under the Apache 2.0 license at http://www.labkey.org
LabKey Server’s tools for Luminex immunoassays were developed as a collaboration between the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research & Prevention (SCHARP) at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and LabKey Software.
LabKey Software (http://labkey.com) provides professional support, training, and custom development for LabKey Server, plus informatics planning advice for translational research organizations. Contact: info@labkey.com