Applying for Tissue Microarrays

The application process for tissue microarray slides is simple and straightforward. The process is outlined below:

1. You submit a Letter of Intent (LOI) to the resource. This letter is to tell us about your research plan to help us determine whether microarray slides are appropriate to answer the question you are posing.
2. The Research Evaluation Panel (REP) will review your LOI as rapidly as possible. If they have any questions about your letter they will contact you directly (via e-mail or telephone) to discuss their concerns.
3. Once your LOI is reviewed, you will be informed of the outcome and if approved, when you can expect to receive the slides you requested.

NOTE TO INVESTIGATORS CONSIDERING A LETTER OF INTENT FOR TMAs:
All TMA sections are inspected and must be judged as acceptable quality prior to shipment. Please note that it is typical for some spots on the TMA to be missing or not to contain the intended target tissue. These difficulties are inherent to the TMA construction process and the nature of any tissue, and are not unique to our TMAs. Our quality control studies have indicated that missing or incorrect target tissue may occur with a frequency as high as approximately 25-30% for colon cancer tissues and as high as 50% for adenomatous polyps, depending on the depth at which the sections were cut from the TMA block. The TMAs have been designed with these rates in mind, and the number of cases represented on the TMA has been increased to account for the expected rate of unusable cores. You might also observe some distortion of the sections and some rolling or folding of certain tissue spots. It is our experience that these distortions generally do not significantly limit the ability to obtain reliable assay readings. Additional spot loss may occur during the assay procedure, with the rate of loss dependent on the assay conditions.

It is recommended that the TMA sections should be stored in the dark at 4 °C upon receipt and used within one year. This recommendation is based upon our experience with similar TMA sections that have been used successfully for a number of assays for up to one year after the date of receipt when stored under the above conditions.

The resource cannot accept returns of unused TMAs.