NTRK Analyte Control

Our NTRK Analyte Control contains two cell lines that demonstrate positive and negative expression of NTRK. It specifically expresses wild type (WT) TRKA, that is recognised by the pan-NTRK antibodies as the WT TRK proteins and fusion proteins share a highly homologous c-terminus, within which the tyrosine kinase domain resides.

This product is ideal for use as a same slide quality control in immunohistochemistry (IHC) to demonstrate the reagents have been applied to the slide.

IHC using Roche pan-TRK on the Ventana BenchMark ULTRA

Breast Ductal Carcinoma

Large Cell Lymphoma

Introduction to NTRK

NTRK is a group of three Neurotrophic Tyrosine Receptor Kinase genes: NTRK1, NTRK2 and NTRK3, each encode for the respective proteins TRKA, TRKB and TRKC. The external domain of the TRK receptors binds neurotrophin causing receptor dimerization, transphosphorylation and thus downstream signalling.

These NTRK genes are readily spliced, the resulting fusion proteins end up with the C-terminal containing the tyrosine kinase/signalling part of the TRK protein. These fusion proteins are constitutively activated and drive tumorigenesis.

NTRK assessment

There are a number of means to assess NTRK gene translocations, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is the most effective means of assessing protein. The most widely used antibody in IHC is the EPR17341 clone. This is a Pan-TRK monoclonal antibody recognising the C-terminal domain of the TRKA, TRKB and TRKC proteins.

There are pros and cons to each method. Typically, formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissues are assessed by IHC and reflexed to a molecular method.