Advances in quantitative immunohistochemistry and their contribution to breast cancer

Introduction: Automated image analysis provides an objective, quantitative, and reproducible method of measurement of biomarkers. Image quantification is particularly well suited for the analysis of tissue microarrays which has played a major pivotal role in the rapid assessment of molecular biomarkers. Data acquired from grinding up bulk tissue samples miss spatial information regarding cellular localization; therefore, methods that allow for spatial cell phenotyping at high resolution have proven to be valuable in many biomarker discovery assays. Here, we focus our attention on breast cancer as an example of a tumor type that has benefited from quantitative biomarker studies using tissue microarray format.Areas covered: The history of immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry and the current status of these techniques, including multiplexing technologies (spectral and non-spectral) and image analysis software will be addressed. Finally, we will turn our attention to studies that have provided proof-of-principle evidence that have been impacted from the use of these techniques.Expert opinion: Assessment of prognostic and predictive biomarkers on tissue sections and TMA using Quantitative immunohistochemistry is an important advancement in the investigation of biologic markers. The challenges in standardization of quantitative technologies for accurate assessment are required for adoption into routine clinical practice.