Furthermore other possible reasons of this discrepancy could be: 1) the greater sensitivity of molecular technique like RT-PCR in detecting very low expression levels of DMBT1 that were below detection by immunohistochemistry, 2) sampling problems i.e. the presence of few positive tumour cells only in the frozen samples or 3) few immunoreactive cells have been missed by microscopic examination and finally 4) DMBT1 protein could have an altered epitope not recognized by its paratope in the antibody. This evidence concerns the gene DMBT1 and neoplasm.