title: Economic methods used in fabrication of tissue microarray: A pilot study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Tissue microarray (TMA) is a method of harvesting small disks of tissue from a range of standard paraffin tissue blocks and placing them in an array on a recipient paraffin block such that hundreds of cases can be analyzed simultaneously by using only a few microliters of antibody in immunohistochemistry as a single experiment. The TMA construction done with the help of automated tissue arrayer or commercially available rubber molds are expensive. This study involved the fabrication of TMA using rubber-based additional silicone mold constructed in the department and comparison of this method with two other methods of fabricating TMA.
  
  
  METHODS
  The TMA mold was fabricated using silicone material in the department. The recipient blocks were prepared. The tissue core prepared from donor blocks were inserted into the recipient blocks. The sections taken from this were compared with the TMA using double-sided adhesive tape technique and TMA by punching out holes in prefabricated dummy paraffin recipient block for insertion of tissue core.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The TMA using a mold made of silicone showed more advantages than other two methods.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Fabricating TMA mold using silicone in the department is inexpensive and yet efficient.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Government Dental College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Sahana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Srinath
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Government Dental College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Rohit Kumar
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Kendole
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Government Dental College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Pavana
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gopinath
authors.affiliation: Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, Government Dental College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Srinath
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Krishnappa
authors.affiliation: Department of Prosthodontics, Government Dental College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: S K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Vishwanath
keywords: Multiple small tubular structures; silicone molds; tissue microarray