Loss of Human Epidermal Receptor 2 Expression in Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Breast Cancer Samples and the Rescuing Effect of Enhanced Antigen Retrieval and Signal Amplification

Abstract

As an important therapeutic target in breast cancer, HER2 expression assessed by immunohistochemistry plays a critical role in breast cancer treatment. Recent advances in HER2 antibody–drug conjugate therapy have enabled patients with HER2-low expression breast cancer to benefit from the drugs. However, it is not known whether the HER2-low expression in breast cancer FFPE blocks would be lost as storage time increased. In this study, we aimed to assess the loss of HER2 antigenicity in stored FFPE blocks of breast cancer and the rescue effect of modifying the protocol of antigen staining. We selected archived HER2-low breast cancer FFPE blocks with stored time ranging from 1 year to over 15 years and re-detected the expression of HER2. Our study showed that HER2 antigenicity loss increased with storage time and could cause false negativity in HER2-low detection. Moreover, we showed that by either increasing the antigen retrieval time or applying the tyramide signal amplification (TSA) kit, the HER2 signal can be rescued and detected in about half of the cases with HER2-low loss without causing false positivity.