24^th Annual Pathology Congress

Immunohistochemistry takes its name from the roots "immuno", in reference to the antibodies used in the procedure, and"histo", meaning tissue. Albert Coons first conceptualized and implemented the procedure in 1941.  The most common application of immunostaining is involving the process of selectively identifying the antigens in cells of a tissue section by exploiting the principle of antibodies binding specifically to antigens in biological tissues. Immunohistochemical staining is most widely used in the diagnosis of abnormal cells of the cancerous tumors. In immunohistochemical techniques, there are several steps prior to the final staining of the tissue antigen, which can cause a variety of problems including strong background staining, weak target antigen staining, and autofluorescence. IHC is an excellent detection technique and has tremendous advantage of being able to show exactly where a given protein is located within the tissue examined. In most human cancer forms Immunohistochemistry is also used for protein profiling. While the term immunohistochemistry is often used interchangeably with immunocytochemistry, slight differences exist between IHC and ICC in the nature of the biological sample which is to be analysed. 

Each sample is treated differently, yet all the methods are interchangeable. There is no one way to prepare such types of cell samples for immunocytochemical analysis.

Many clinical laboratories in tertiary hospitals will have menus of over 200 antibodies used as diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers.