Tissue microarray construction

Tissue microarrays are constructed by removing a core — a tube-shaped section — of tissue from a paraffin block (donor block) using a hollow needle and transferring this core to a predetermined position on a paraffin recipient block. Tissue microarrays are often used to compare control and diseased sections within one slide constructed on a semiautomated platform.

Individual arrays can be constructed with as many as 360 cores of 0.6-millimeter diameter or 187 cores of 1-millimeter diameter. Also, tissue microarrays with up to 60 cores of 2-millimeter diameter can be manually created.