Determination of Ki-67 defined growth fraction by monoclonal antibody MIB-1 in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded prostatic cancer tissues.

The applicability of MIB-1, a monoclonal antibody directed against the Ki-67 antigen, was studied in the PC-82 and LNCaP prostatic tumor models at various levels of proliferative activity. Statistically significant correlations were found in LNCaP cultures between Ki-67 and MIB-1 scores (r = 0.84, P < 0.001), and in PC-82 tumors between MIB-1 scores and paraffin tissue Ki-67 (pKi-67) (r = 0.90, P < 0.001), frozen tissue (fKi-67) (r = 0.86, P < 0.001), and BrdU uptake (r = 0.70, P < 0.001), respectively. pKi-67 scores were double the fKi-67 scores, which may be due to methodological differences. MIB-1 scores exceeded both the fKi-67 and pKi-67 scores. The affinity of MIB-1 for the antigen is much higher than the affinity of Ki-67, which may explain the differences. MIB-1 is a promising means of evaluating the presence of only minute amounts of the Ki-67 antigen in paraffin-embedded human tumor material, especially in relatively slowly growing tumors.