Sensitivity of a Novel Biotin-Free Detection Reagent (Powervision+^™) for Immunohistochemistry

Abstract

One of the important goals in immunohistochemistry (IHC) is to achieve greater sensitivity with detection systems using the shortest possible incubation time. A second generation of polymer-based, biotin-free detection reagent, (PowerVision+^™), was introduced by ImmunoVision Technologies Co. (Daly City, CA) in 2001. It is based on polymeric technology, which uses compact enzyme-antibody conjugates resulting in markedly increased penetrative ability of the reagent with improved detection sensitivity and efficiency. We evaluated the detection sensitivity and efficiency of the PowerVision+^™ reagent in a comparative IHC study with the two currently available detection reagents: Super Sensitive Multilink® (BioGenex Laboratories, Inc.) and Envision^™ (DAKO).

The experimental design incorporated a panel of 20 primary antibodies. Immunohistochemistry was performed on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded archival tissues under identical conditions.

The results revealed that the sensitivity of the PowerVision+^™ reagent was significantly greater than other two detection systems. The polylabeling PowerVision+^™ reagent had the advantages of amplification of staining intensity, better standardization of IHC protocols, and lower costs as a result of higher dilution of primary antibodies. In addition, it is a biotin-free detection reagent without the disadvantages of endogenous biotin reactivity. (The J Histotechnol 25:247, 2002)

Keywords:

• immunohistochemistry
• antigen retrieval
• polymeric labeling
• heat-induced epitope retrieval