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Comparison of immunohistochemistry with immunoassay (ELISA) for the detection of components of the plasminogen activation system in human tumour tissue
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  • Regular Article
  • Open access
  • Published: 26 February 1999

Comparison of immunohistochemistry with immunoassay (ELISA) for the detection of components of the plasminogen activation system in human tumour tissue

  • C M Ferrier1,
  • H H de Witte2,
  • H Straatman3,
  • D H van Tienoven2,
  • W L van Geloof1,
  • F J R Rietveld1,
  • C G J Sweep2,
  • D J Ruiter1 &
  • …
  • G N P van Muijen1 

British Journal of Cancer volume 79, pages 1534–1541 (1999)Cite this article

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Summary

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) methods and immunohistochemistry (IHC) are techniques that provide information on protein expression in tissue samples. Both methods have been used to investigate the impact of the plasminogen activation (PA) system in cancer. In the present paper we first compared the expression levels of uPA, tPA, PAI-1 and uPAR in a compound group consisting of 33 cancer lesions of various origin (breast, lung, colon, cervix and melanoma) as quantitated by ELISA and semi-quantitated by IHC. Secondly, the same kind of comparison was performed on a group of 23 melanoma lesions and a group of 28 breast carcinoma lesions. The two techniques were applied to adjacent parts of the same frozen tissue sample, enabling the comparison of results obtained on material of almost identical composition. Spearman correlation coefficients between IHC results and ELISA results for uPA, tPA, PAI-1 and uPAR varied between 0.41 and 0.78, and were higher for the compound group and the breast cancer group than for the melanoma group. Although a higher IHC score category was always associated with an increased median ELISA value, there was an overlap of ELISA values from different scoring classes. Hence, for the individual tumour cases the relation between ELISA and IHC is ambiguous. This indicates that the two techniques are not directly interchangeable and that their value for clinical purposes may be different.

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  • 16 November 2011

    This paper was modified 12 months after initial publication to switch to Creative Commons licence terms, as noted at publication

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Pathology, University Hospital Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, Nijmegen, 6500 HB, The Netherlands

    C M Ferrier, W L van Geloof, F J R Rietveld, D J Ruiter & G N P van Muijen

  2. Department of Chemical Endocrinology, University Hospital Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, Nijmegen, 6500 HB, The Netherlands

    H H de Witte, D H van Tienoven & C G J Sweep

  3. Department of Epidemiology, University Hospital Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, Nijmegen, 6500 HB, The Netherlands

    H Straatman

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  1. C M Ferrier
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  2. H H de Witte
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  4. D H van Tienoven
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From twelve months after its original publication, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

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Ferrier, C., Witte, H., Straatman, H. et al. Comparison of immunohistochemistry with immunoassay (ELISA) for the detection of components of the plasminogen activation system in human tumour tissue. Br J Cancer 79, 1534–1541 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bjc.6690245

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  • Received: 20 January 1998

  • Revised: 29 July 1998

  • Accepted: 10 August 1998

  • Published: 26 February 1999

  • Issue date: 01 March 1999

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bjc.6690245

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Keywords

  • ELISA
  • immunohistochemistry
  • plasminogen activator system
  • correlation

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