TMA in daily pathology use

Scientific symposium: New Ways in Cancer Mangement

Hamburg

Jojanneke Renes

24-02-2017

Tissue Microarray (TMA)

TMA pros and cons

Pros Con

Lower costs Tissue heterogeneity

Reducing time

Less patient sample needed

IHC standardization

TMA GrandMaster

- World’s highest capacity: 72 blocks

• 60 donor blocks

• 12 recipient blocks at the same time

4 core diameters

• 0.6 mm max. 558 cores

• 1 mm max. 286 cores

• 1.5 mm max. 135 cores

• 2 mm max. 84 cores

TMA 1.5 and 0.6 mm diameter

85 cores 149 cores

GM TMA software

Prepare HE slides from each donor

block

Scan slides

Mark locations of the cores in

the scanned

slides

TMA production

TMA in stove (56˚C)

Cut sections

from recipient block for

IHC

TMA workflow

Working Mechanism of the TMA GrandMaster

“Old’’ TMA system

Alphelys Westburg

Where do we use the TMA GM for in pathology?

TMA requests

• Research requests

• Control blocks for diagnostics

TMA block

• Tissue

• Diameter

• Pattern

• Donor tissue in 2 – 3 fold

• Reference tissue

Research

• Produce tumour or organ specific TMA blocks

• Protein, DNA and RNA targets• Identify new diagnostic and prognostic markers

Diagnostics

• Positive and negative control

• Quality control

CERB control TMA

ER/PR+

Breast

CERB 3+

Breast

Summary

• TMA brings major economies in time and

costs of slide preparation and staining.

• Quality control for IHC and FISH.

• TMA is a very useful tool in pathology!

Many thanks!

• 6 PCR cassettes

• 10 PCR tubes / cassette

• use of cleaning block to avoid cross contamination

• extracted FFPE tissue samples are ready for DNA extraction

and PCR analysis with commercially available kits

PCR extraction