Tissue microarrays – brief history, techniques and clinical future

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: There is a growing need for better, cheaper and faster histopathological diagnostic. The authors reviewed the main steps of the efforts towards the improvement of the pre-analytical phase of tissue processing for histological examination. Results: Since their introduction decades ago tissue microarrays (TMAs) proved their value by increasing efficiency, standardization and accuracy of many histological techniques, such as histochemistry, histoenzymology, immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, etc. By allowing the simultaneous analysis and comparison of multiple different tissues on a single histology slide (up to 1000 individual samples), TMAs are also having a significant economic advantage (consumables and labor). From its first description until recent years, the TMA techniques have evolved steadily but slowly despite many attempts to adapt it for clinical diagnostics. In this paper, we are reviewing the main techniques of obtaining TMA blocks from the beginning to the present day, as well as recent developments that are expanding their scope into high accuracy/efficiency clinical diagnostics. Conclusions: Considering recent developments, we believe that the prospect of high-throughput histology might be achievable in the not-so-distant future.

TMA-Mate: An open-source modular toolkit for constructing tissue microarrays of arbitrary layouts

“…Published self-made manually performed methods are generally low-cost techniques, differing mainly in the procedure of recipient block fabrication [36] , [37] , [38] (recently reviewed and compared in [37] , [39] ).…”

Quality Assurance and Cost Reduction in Histopathology Laboratories Using Tissue Microarrays

“…Numerous studies suggest that multiplexing methods can reduce costs by almost half and can also improve the efficiency of the diagnosis [1][2][3]. Tissue microarray (TMA) technology facilitates the parallel analysis of multiple tissue samples, giving us a tool for increasing the efficiency, standardization, and accuracy of many histological techniques in both clinical and research laboratories [1,4]. Two multiplexing methods are already used in clinical diagnosis: a method was developed in 2013 by S. Mus , at, represented by the BxChip™ (LUMEA Inc., Lehi, UT, USA), the first clinical TMA [5], and a second method was developed by W.P.…”

“…Tissue Orientation Gels are available in five configurations: biopsy gel, 2 lanes, and 1, 2, and 3 mm punch gels [10]. The disadvantage of this method is the lack of an identification code for the patient or the number of excised biopsies [4].…”