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Recommended applications: Estrogen receptor (ER) IHC control with strong, moderate and low/negative expressers.
 
Description: The array contains three cases of invasive ductual carcinoma of the breast.  All the tissues were from surgical resection. They were fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin for 24 hours and processed using identical SOPs. Sections were picked onto Superfrost Plus or Startfrost slides.  As validated by IHC, A1 is a strong (+++) expresser, A2 is a moderate (++) expresser while A3 is weak or non-expresser of the ER molecule. 

Scoring criteria: The key element in the ER IHC scoring is the percentage of the nuclear staining. Many laboratories set a threshold for ER positivity at a minimum of 10% nuclear staining. The common scoring system includes “-“ (<10%), “+” (10%~30%), “++” (30%~80%) and “+++” (>80%).  It is also important to incorporate staining intensity. Many other laboratories may use 5% of nuclear staining as the threshold for ER positivity. However, NIH recommends that any positive ER staining is considered as a positive result.

Notes: Bake at 60C for 30 minutes before use. If antigen retrieving is needed, it is always a good idea to start with a protocol with weak to mild strength