Guidelines and considerations for conducting experiments using tissue microarrays

Abstract

Tissue microarrays (TMAs) represent a powerful method for undertaking large-scale tissue-based biomarker studies. While TMAs offer several advantages, there are a number of issues specific to their use which need to be considered when employing this method. Given the investment in TMA-based research, guidance on design and execution of experiments will be of benefit and should help researchers new to TMA-based studies to avoid known pitfalls. Furthermore, a consensus on quality standards for TMA-based experiments should improve the robustness and reproducibility of studies, thereby increasing the likelihood of identifying clinically useful biomarkers. In order to address these issues, the National Cancer Research Institute Biomarker and Imaging Clinical Studies Group organized a 1-day TMA workshop held in Nottingham in May 2012. The document herein summarizes the conclusions from the workshop. It includes guidance and considerations on all aspects of TMA-based research, including the pre-analytical stages of experimental design, the analytical stages of data acquisition, and the postanalytical stages of data analysis. A checklist is presented which can be used both for planning a TMA experiment and interpreting the results of such an experiment. For studies of cancer biomarkers, this checklist could be used as a supplement to the REMARK guidelines.

Gene expression profiling-derived immunohistochemistry signature with high prognostic value in colorectal carcinoma

“…Tissue microarrays (TMAs) containing the specimens from Changhai Hospital were commercially developed (Outdo Biotech, Shanghai, China) and those from The Sixth Affiliated Hospital were developed conforming to the guidelines 32 33. The construction of tissue microarrays is detailed in online data supplement.…”

Detailed characterization of incretin cell distribution along the human small intestine

“…Tissue sections collected were fixed in 4% buffered formaldehyde (Panreacs, Barcelona, Spain) for 24 hours before being subjected to routine automatic tissue processing procedures for light microscopy. After identifying the small intestinal mucosa in the hematoxilin-eosin-stained slides, paraffin blocks containing sequential 2-mm tissue cores representing all intestinal mucosa samples were created for each cadaver, using tissue microarrays (TMA) [29,30]. In all TMA blocks, liver and pancreatic tissue fragments were included to be used as negative and positive controls, respectively.…”

Profile of apoptotic proteins in oral squamous cell carcinoma: A cluster analysis of 171 cases

“…Another possible limitation of this study is the use of Tissue microarrays, due to intra-tumor heterogeneity of protein expression. However, increasing the number of cores collected from the sample and/or increasing the core diameter can circumvent this limitation [35,36]. Furthermore, the use of an automated scoring system enables a more objective and quantitative acquisition of staining result measurements due to its higher accuracy, sensitivity and better reproducibility of data [36,37].…”