title: Reliability of the tissue microarray based FISH for evaluation of the HER-2 oncogene in breast carcinoma.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Tumour tissue microarray allows the analysis of hundreds of tumour samples simultaneously on a single microscope slide. However, the extremely small tissue samples taken from the original tissue may not always be representative of the entire tumour.
  
  
  METHODS
  The reliability of this new technology was investigated by analysing HER-2 oncogene amplification by fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) from representative slides of the whole tumour and small tissue core biopsies from 29 invasive breast tumours.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The tissue microarray method had high accuracy; in only one of 29 cases (3.4%; 95% confidence interval, 0% to 10%) were the results discordant with whole tumour analysis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Tumour microarray is a highly reliable method for analysing HER-2 oncogene amplification by FISH in human breast tumours.
authors.affiliation: Translational Research Unit of the Chemotherapy Department, Jules Bordet Institute, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. dgan24@hotmail.com
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gancberg
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Di Leo
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rouas
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Järvinen
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Verhest
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Isola
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Piccart
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Larsimont
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis*; D001707:Biopsy, Needle; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm / Q000235:genetics*; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005260:Female; D018734:Genes, erbB-2; D006801:Humans; D017404:In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm