MAdL: A new diagnostic marker for adenocarcinomas

With regard to the growing number of targeted therapies in lung cancer, a specific and reliable sub-differentiation is of crucial importance. Without discriminating adenocarcinomas from squamous cell carcinomas, molecular based diagnostics that e.g. target certain mutations in the EGFR gene are not applicable and hence, the patients cannot profit from the new therapies. To generate an antibody that, reliably detects adenocarcinomas of the lung in addition to the established markers, we immunized mice with primary human alveolar cells type II. Hybridomas were produced to obtain cell culture supernatants that were screened on tissue micro arrays. Among others, we identified one clone that strongly binds human adenocarcinomas of the lung. Since most of patient material are Formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded, we established an antigen retrieval protocol that works on FFPE tissues. Here we present a monoclonal antibody, designated MAdL as a new specific marker for adenocarcinomas of the lung.