title: In-house Manual Construction of High-Density and High-Quality Tissue Microarrays by Using Homemade Recipient Agarose-Paraffin Blocks.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Self-made tissue punches can be effectively used to punch holes in blank recipient paraffin blocks and extract tissue cores from the donor paraffin blocks for the low-cost construction of tissue microarrays (TMAs). However, variable degrees of section distortion and loss of the tissue cores can occurs during cutting of the TMAs, posing technical problems for in-house manual construction of high-density TMAs. We aimed to update the method for in-house manual TMA construction to improve the quality of high-density TMAs.
  
  
  METHODS
  Blocks of agarose gel were subjected to the standard tissue processing and embedding procedure to prepare recipient agarose-paraffin blocks. The self-made tissue punches and recipient agarose-paraffin blocks were used to construct TMAs, which were completely melted and re-embedded in paraffin to make finished TMA blocks.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The donor tissue cores were completely integrated into the surrounding paraffin of the recipient blocks. This method enabled us to construct high-density TMAs with significantly less section distortion or loss of tissue cores during microtomy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Simple and inexpensive construction of high-density and high-quality TMAs can be warranted by using paraffinized agarose gels as recipient blocks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Inha University Hospital, Inha University College of Medicine, Incheon, Korea.
authors.forename: Kyu Ho
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Suk Jin
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Yeon Il
authors.initials: YI
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: In Suh
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Jee Young
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Joon Mee
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Young Chae
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Chu
keywords: Paraffin; Pathology; Research; Sepharose; Tissue array analysis