Evaluation of the Ca 1 antibody in the diagnosis of invasive breast cancer.

An evaluation of Ca 1 antibody staining was performed on paraffin sections from 136 breast lesions (64 benign and 72 malignant). Although cytoplasmic staining was encountered significantly more often in malignant lesions, the false negative rate was 6.9% and the false positive rate 56.2%. Benign lesions which showed positive staining included gynaecomastia, cystic mastopathy and fibroadenomata. Various other monoclonal antibodies showed staining similar to Ca 1 antibody. Ca 1 antibody was observed to bind to epithelial membrane antigen-coated sepharose beads.