TMA Buyers' Guide

Courtesy of Ronald Simon, University of Basel

Barely five years ago, Juha Kononen, then at the National Cancer Institute, presented a straightforward way of constructing tissue microarrays (TMAs): a glass slide covered with as many as 1,000 cores of tissue, measuring from 0.6 mm to 2.0 mm in diameter.¹ Suddenly, researchers could analyze gene expression and protein levels on hundreds of tissue samples by processing just one slide, instead of the hundreds previously required. As a result, scientists can better validate molecular markers of both development and disease.

As with many burgeoning fields, new users of TMAs find many options but little guidance in making a purchasing decision. The Scientist asked experts such as Kornelia Polyak, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to help summarize some of the key considerations. Polyak uses TMAs in her search for molecular markers of breast cancer progression.

A variety of factors ...