Anaplastic lymphoma kinase immunohistochemistry in lung adenocarcinomas: Evaluation of performance of standard manual method using D5F3 antibody

OBJECTIVE: Immunohistochemistry (IHC) with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) antibodies is considered as an economical screening method in lung adenocarcinomas. Automated Ventana D5F3-IHC is approved by US Food and Drug Administration for targeted therapy; however, the automated IHC apparatus are not widely used in most laboratories. We evaluated the performance of ALK IHC using the manual semiquantitative method to assess the concordance with Ventana ALK IHC assay. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We tested 156 cases of primary lung adenocarcinomas for ALK protein expression by D5F3-IHC. The intensity of cytoplasmic staining was classified as 0 or 1+/2+/3+ (weak/medium/strong). Binary score of positive and negative was used for Ventana assay. A comparison analysis and clinicopathological features were recorded. RESULTS: ALK IHC was positive in 25 (16.02%) cases, of which 18 were men and mostly nonsmokers. The mean age for all patients was 55 years, and for ALK IHC-positive cases was 48 years. Nine of 25 (36%) ALK IHC-positive cases showed signet ring cell and mucinous morphology. On comparison, all, but one, cases positive by manual method showed positive results by automated assay. IHC negative cases by manual method were negative by Ventana assay. CONCLUSION: Manual IHC is equally effective in the detection of ALK-rearranged cases as automated methods. It can be easily integrated as a screening method into routine practice thus reducing the cost of automated systems. However, equivocal cases should be tested by approved methods.