Immunohistochemistry and Molecular Biology in Transbronchial Cryobiopsies

Immunohistochemical analyses have an important role in lung pathology, especially in lung cancer diagnosis and prognostication. In interstitial lung pathology, the use of immunohistochemical markers is limited, although this robust methodology has provided significant data on the pathogenic features of several diseases, including IPF. After the introduction of cryobiopsy, this in situ “proteomic” analysis can be more easily and frequently applied in order to provide new insights in the diseases’ pathogenesis, as well as to discover and validate new diagnostic markers to be utilized in clinical practice. In this review we describe a variety of immunohistochemical markers that can provide ancillary information in both lung cancer and nonneoplastic lung pathology, providing information for an economic and informative use of this technology.