The concept of personalized or stratified medicine in thoracic oncology have led to the development of companion diagnostic testing in the laboratories in order to detect genomic alterations which can be targeted by therapeutic molecules. The use of these companion tests has to be associated with an optimized quality control with the aim of getting solid results before treatment administration to the patients. The great majority of these tests is based on molecular biology approach. However, since the commercial availability of different antibodies targeting genomic alterations which can be used in formalin fixed paraffin sections, an alternative method to the molecular approach is the immunohistochemistry (IHC). Some of these antibodies are or will be probably soon used in a daily routine practice (such as anti-ALK or anti-MET antibodies). Other antibodies have currently a more restricted use in thoracic oncology (such as anti-BRAF V600E, anti-ROS1 and mutation-specific anti-EGFR antibodies). In this review, we aim to detail the advantages and the limits of IHC method in thoracic oncology field for personalized medicine, in particular comparatively to the molecular biology technology. Moreover, we discuss the opportunity to provide accredited IHC tests in the context of stratified medicine for lung cancer patients.
Keywords: accreditation; immunohistochemistry; lung cancer; molecular biology; personalized medicine; targeted therapy.