Multiplex Immunohistochemistry Staining for Paraffin-embedded Lung Cancer Tissue

Summary

This experimental protocol describes and optimizes a multiplex immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining method, mainly by optimizing single-channel antibody incubation conditions and adjusting the settings of antibodies and channels to solve the problems of autofluorescence and channel crosstalk in lung cancer tissues of clinical origin.

Abstract

Lung cancer is the leading cause of malignant tumor-related morbidity and mortality all over the world, and the complex tumor microenvironment has been considered the leading cause of death in lung cancer patients. The complexity of the tumor microenvironment requires effective methods to understand cell-to-cell relationships in tumor tissues. The multiplex immunohistochemistry (mIHC) technique has become a key tool for inferring the relationship between the expression of proteins upstream and downstream of signaling pathways in tumor tissues and developing clinical diagnoses and treatment plans. mIHC is a multi-label immunofluorescence staining method based on Tyramine Signal Amplification (TSA) technology, which can simultaneously detect multiple target molecules on the same tissue section sample to achieve different protein co-expression and co-localization analysis. In this experimental protocol, paraffin-embedded tissue sections of lung squamous carcinoma of clinical origin were subjected to multiplex immunohistochemical staining. By optimizing the experimental protocol, multiplex immunohistochemical staining of labeled target cells and proteins was achieved, solving the problem of autofluorescence and channel crosstalk in lung tissues. In addition, multiplex immunohistochemical staining is widely used in the experimental validation of tumor-related, high-throughput sequencing, including single-cell sequencing, proteomics, and tissue space sequencing, providing intuitive and visual pathology validation results.

Introduction

Tyramine signal amplification (TSA), which has a history of more than 20 years, is a class of assay techniques that use horseradish peroxidase (HRP) for high-density in situ labeling of target antigens and is widely applied in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), in situ hybridization (ISH), immunohistochemistry (IHC), and other techniques for the detection of biological antigens, substantially improving the sensitivity of the detected signal¹. Opal polychromatic staining based on TSA technology has been recently developed and widely used in several studies^2,3<....

Protocol

The protocol is approved by the guidelines of the Ethics Committee of West China Hospital, Sichuan University, China. The lung cancer tissue samples were obtained during surgery in the Center of Lung Cancer at West China Hospital, and informed consent was obtained from each patient.

1. Tissue section preparation

1. FFPE preparation
   1. Immerse clinical tissues in neutral formalin solution for more than 72 h.
   2. Complete the process of dehydrating the t.......

Discussion

mIHC is an indispensable experimental technique in the field of scientific research for the quantitative and spatial analysis of multiple protein markers at the single-cell level in a single tissue section, providing intuitive and accurate data for the study of disease pathology by focusing on the detailed tissue structure and cellular interactions in the context of the original tissue. The widespread adoption of mIHC technology will require optimized and effective experimental protocols. To address the problems that may.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Reagents
Anti-CD8	Abcam	ab237709	Primary antibody, 1/100, PH9
Anti-CD68	Abcam	ab955	Primary antibody, 1/300, PH9
Anti-CK5/6	Millipore	MAB1620	Primary antibody, 1/150, PH9
Anti-HMGCS1	GeneTex	GTX112346	Primary antibody, 1/300, PH6
Animal nonimmune serum	MXB Biotechnologies	SP KIT-B3	Antigen blocking
Fluormount-G	SouthernBiotech	0100-01	Anti-fluorescent burst
Opal PolarisTM 7-Color Manual IHC Kit	Akoya	NEL861001KT	Opal mIHC Staining
Wash Buffer	Dako	K8000/K8002/K8007/K8023	Washing the tissues slides
Software
HALO			intelligent quantitative tissue analysis software, paid software
inForm			intelligent quantitative tissue analysis software, paid software
PerkinElmer Vectra			multispectral tissue imaging systems, fully automatic scanning of tissue slides.
QuPath 0.3.2			intelligent quantitative tissue analysis software, open source software, used in this experiment.