Pros And Cons Of Tissue Microarray

A tissue microarray is a fairly recent high-throughput application that allows researchers to test hundreds of tissue samples with antibodies of their choice at once.  Essentially, a tissue microarray is a paraffin block that is produced by a composition of tissue cores from paraffin donor blocks within defined coordinates to account for a variety of tissue types. You can also browse this site to know more about tissue microarray.

Due to the success of the traditional IHC experimental method in advancing clinical research and drug discovery, the introduction of high-throughput IHC is pivotal to understanding the transformation of tissues from healthy to malignant.  This article will go deeper into the pros and cons of tissue microarray, as well as real-world applications.

When it comes to a tissue microarray, the advantages far outweigh any limitations.  To begin, tissue microarrays are an excellent choice when you need to conserve primary antibody usage.  Instead of testing 100 tissue samples via IHC the conventional way, you can now use a minimal amount of your primary antibody to cover more ground.  This is especially helpful when you have a polyclonal antibody that hasn’t been specifically reliable lot to lot or a rare antigen that you don’t have a high volume of. 

In addition, being able to screen hundreds of tissues from a similar sample demographic that are all exposed to the same experimental conditions will strengthen the produced results.  Furthermore, the opportunity to perform rigorous statistical analysis on a larger sample size will also increase the statistical significance of your conclusions for a fraction of the time and cost typically associated with an IHC experiment. 

Limitations with tissue microarray may arise when large populations of tissue samples required are not available, or the cost to purchase the tissue is too high. Furthermore, while a high number of tissue varieties can be tested at once, there are limitations with the number of molecular targets that can be analyzed. 

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