Tissue Microarray: A powerful and rapidly evolving tool for high-throughput analysis of clinical specimens

This review discusses about the various aspects of the Tissue microarray (TMA) technology and its applications in modern molecular and clinical research. Tissue microarrays (TMAs) allow a rapid, cost-effective, high through-put analysis of thousands of molecular markers at nucleic acids or protein level. This high through-put technology enables identification of diagnostic and prognostic markers, in an array of clinical tissue specimens and further translates molecular research to clinical research. A very notable advantage of tissue microarray technology is that it quantitatively amplifies the tissues available for testing, which are normally a limited source in the pathology labs. Various types of tumors, at various stages of disease progression can also be studied at a single platform, in identical conditions in less labor-intensive and cost-effective ways. The current perspectives of this technology in biomedical sciences are promising and researchers can benefit from the enormous data acquired through the use of TMA. In the past decade understanding the pathogenesis, progression and treatment of diseases has been revolutionized by using a combination of molecular biology techniques and standard histopathologic procedures. Many novel disease-specific genetic markers and cellular proteins have been identified in the past. Characterization of these markers becomes challenging when multiple markers need to be studied on many clinical specimens using conventional histopathological techniques. Analyses of fresh frozen or paraffin wax embedded tissues for gene and gene clusters or protein markers using routine techniques is cumbersome, time consuming, requires large amount of costly reagents, is affected by laboratory conditions and person-to-person handling and is scientifically less informative and reliable. These limitations can been overcome using tissue microarray (TMA) technology. The purpose of this article is to review the currently known aspects of tissue microarray technology and its application in biomedical sciences.