Detection of galectin-3 by IHC

Capalbo et al. (IJMS, 2019) recently highlighted the benefit of Mabtech’s anti-human galectin-3 monoclonal antibody for the analysis of non-small cell lung carcinoma sections by immunohistochemistry. The galectin-3 signature detected in this way was identified as a marker for predictive responsiveness of patients to checkpoint-inhibitor based immunotherapy.

Galactin-3 binds polylactosamine glycans, thereby having among others direct immunomodulatory effects. High levels of galectin-3 were associated to disease progression while low levels correlated to responsiveness to pembrolizumab treatment, a PD-1 inhibitor used as first line treatment in cancer highly expressing PD-L1