High quality tissue miniarray technique using a conventional TV/radio telescopic antenna.
BACKGROUND
The tissue microarray (TMA) is widely accepted as a fast and cost-effective research tool for in situ tissue analysis in modern pathology. However, the current automated and manual TMA techniques have some drawbacks restricting their productivity. Our study aimed to introduce an improved manual tissue miniarray (TmA) technique that is simple and readily applicable to a broad range of tissue samples.


METHODS
In this study, a conventional TV/radio telescopic antenna was used to punch tissue cores manually from donor paraffin embedded tissue blocks which were pre-incubated at 40oC. The cores were manually transferred, organized and attached to a standard block mould, and filled with liquid paraffin to construct TmA blocks without any use of recipient paraffin blocks.


RESULTS
By using a conventional TV/radio antenna, it was possible to construct TmA paraffin blocks with variable formats of array size and number (2-mm x 42, 2.5-mm x 30, 3-mm x 24, 4-mm x 20 and 5-mm x 12 cores). Up to 2-mm x 84 cores could be mounted and stained on a standard microscopic slide by cutting two sections from two different blocks and mounting them beside each other. The technique was simple and caused minimal damage to the donor blocks. H and E and immunostained slides showed well-defined tissue morphology and array configuration.


CONCLUSIONS
This technique is easy to reproduce, quick, inexpensive and creates uniform blocks with abundant tissues without specialized equipment. It was found to improve the stability of the cores within the paraffin block and facilitated no losses during cutting and immunostaining.
Pathology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Menoufyia University, Shibeen Elkom, Egypt E-mail : elkablawy@hotmail.com.
Mohamed A
MA
Elkablawy
Abdulkader M
AM
Albasri
D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D004559:Electric Wiring; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007124:Immunoenzyme Techniques; D016612:Paraffin Embedding / Q000379:methods*; D011786:Quality Control; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases / Q000378:metabolism*; D046888:Tissue Array Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*
D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases; C508053:ERBB2 protein, human