[Use of monoclonal antibodies in pathological diagnostics]

In pathological diagnostics, monoclonal antibodies (mAb) are mainly used for immunhistochemical analysis. After an initial histological evaluation, a precise panel of antibodies is selected in order to stain the slides by using an indirect immune method. The most frequent issues include localisation of the primary tumor in cases of metastases, determination of undifferentiated tumors, subtyping of lympho-proliferative diseases and soft tissue tumors, as well as the assessment of proliferation via Ki-67. Increasing importance in mAb-based diagnostics is attributed to the analysis of predictive biomarkers such as hormone receptors, mismatch repair proteins (MMR) and programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1). Their evaluation is performed by using different scores, which the clinical physician needs to be aware of due to their direct therapeutic implications.