Abstract: The present disclosure relates to methods for the early detection of ERG over-expression, gene rearrangements, and diagnosis and/or prognosis of prostate cancer using a combined ERG IHC-FISH assay.

Abstract: An embodiment of the invention is a method of using a xenograft as a control tissue for histology, comprising staining both a patient and a xenograft-derived control sample under substantially similar staining conditions, and assessing the staining outcomes of the two to determine whether the stain was effective for the patient sample. A xenograft has never been used before in histology as a control, as far as the inventors know. The result of using a xenograft as a control is surprisingly advantageous. First, the cell lines grow and differentiate similarly to a human, taking on the general morphology of a real tissue sample. Second, because the same transformed cell line can be grown limitless times in SCID mice, the xenograft control is highly reproducible, leading to a consistent artificial control that is highly manufacturable and subject to genetic manipulation so that antigens or genetic elements may be embedded in the tissue.