Immunohistochemical staining of cyclooxygenases with monoclonal antibodies

Immunohistochemistry is an important tool that is often used for the diagnosis of several diseases in the pathology laboratory. The quality and sensitivity of immunohistochemical staining is affected by formalin fixation, which results in variable loss of antigenicity, known as a masking effect. While the sensitivity of immunohistochemistry is excellent for certain antigens, other antigens such as COX-1 and COX-2 are difficult to identify, especially in formalin-fixed, paraffin sections. Antigen retrieval is a technique that re-exposes epitopes and allows detection of masked antigens with standard immunohistochemical procedures. One common method involves partial, enzymatic pre-digestion with trypsin or pepsin while other, nonenzymatic procedures or heat-mediated antigen retrieval methods include pressure-cookers, hot plates, or microwave (MW) irradiation of tissue sections in water or a variety of antigen-retrieval solutions. In this chapter, we will describe a technique that provides a more reliable, much simpler approach for the demonstration of cyclooxygenase-1 and cyclooxygenase-2 expression in frozen, vibratome or paraffin sections, and/or cells in cultures.