Tissue microarrays: construction and use.

Tissue microarrays (TMAs) enable high-throughput tissue analysis by selecting a large number of -paraffin-embedded donor tissue block cores and transferring these tissue cores into a positionally encoded array in the recipient TMA block. Once TMAs are constructed, a variety of analysis may be performed on the arrays including histochemical, immunohistochemical, or immunofluorescent staining, and in situ hybridization for DNA or RNA. TMAs offer a cost-effective method for performing parallel analysis of a large number of tissue samples. In this chapter we outline the method of TMA construction with an emphasis on providing useful information in the analysis of a variety of pancreatic neoplasms, including pancreatic adenocarcinomas and pre-invasive lesions. The technique of TMA construction in this chapter is restricted to the use of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue.