The tissue microarray (TMA) method presents as a modern high technology,
although its roots go back to the 80s when researchers frst started to
combine several small pieces of tissues into so-called sausage blocks.
In this respect, the TMA invention was not frstly characterized by
technical improvements, but its true novelty was to link clinical data
to the tissues that were combined on one slide. The very high number of
tissues that can be included into one TMA, the small size and regular
shape of the tissue spots, the preser- tion of integrity of the donor
tissue blocks, and the highly organized array pattern that allows for
reliable allocation of clinical data to individual tissue spots made it
a discrete technique with unique features. When the TMA technology was
developed 12 years ago, its beneft was controversially debated. While
many researchers welcomed the method enthusiastically, there were c-
cerns by others that results obtained from the small tissue cores used
for TMA making would not be suffciently representative of the donor
tissues. Meanwhile, the increasing use of this technology has imposingly
demonstrated its tremendous utility in research. In fact, basically all
clinically relevant associations between molecular markers and clinical
endpoints could be reproduced using only one single 0. 6 mm core per
tissue sample so that TMAs have nowadays become a standard tool allowing
for a new dimension of tissue analysis.
