A plea for appraisal and appreciation of immunohistochemistry in the assessment of prognostic and predictive markers in invasive breast cancer

This viewpoint is a personal reflection on the values and merits of immunohistochemistry in current breast cancer diagnosis. Immunohistochemistry is a validated mainstay in molecular subtyping of invasive breast cancer. Immunohistochemical assessment of hormone receptor status and HER2 expression is used to determine the clinico-pathological surrogate of breast cancer intrinsic subtypes, which guide neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy. The advent of genomic prognostic signatures and qualitative mRNA-based assays makes some clinicians and researchers wonder whether immunohistochemistry should be abandoned. However, the perils and pitfalls of these mRNA-based tests cannot be neglected. This viewpoint offers a brief overview of quality issues in immunohistochemistry and qPCR, as well as a concise summary of currently available evidence on the correlation of immunohistochemistry and mRNA-based testing for prognostic and predictive markers in invasive breast cancer. We strongly advocate the use of immunohistochemistry as it integrates valuable spatial information with quantification of protein expression.

Publication year:2018

BOF-keylabel:yes

IOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:2

CSS-citation score:1

Authors from:Hospital, Higher Education