Introducing Tissue Microarrays to Molecular Pathology

Featured Article: Tissue microarrays for high-throughput molecular profiling of tumor specimens. Kononen J, Bubendorf L, Kallioniemi A, Barlund M, Schraml P, Leighton S, Torhorst J, Mihatsch MJ, Sauter G, Kallioniemi OP. Nat Med. 1998;4:844–7.2Tissue specimens are essential for biomedical and clinical research. In situ detection of DNA, RNA, and protein targets in tissues provides a powerful means to understand disease at the level of the tissue microenvironment and to develop diagnostic biomarkers. However, biobanked samples are often small and valuable collections are depleted over time. The analysis of tissue biomarkers is also labor intensive, slow, and expensive. In 1997, with these limitations in mind, we started to develop array-based technologies for high-throughput in situ analysis of biobanked tissues and tumors.In tissue microarray (TMA) technology, tissue cores from hundreds to up to 1000 tissues are brought together in a regular array format, sectioned, and applied for molecular analyses on microscope slides (1). Hundreds of consecutive slides can be analyzed with different antibodies and probes, thus facilitating the rapid analysis of many …