NCI Colon Cancer Tissue Microarray Case Sets

The NCI Colon Cancer TMAs provide high statistical power for comparisons of marker values between colon cancers of different stages and between colon cancers that recurred within a few years of diagnosis versus colon cancers that remained recurrence free. The array includes tissue from cancer cases representing four different colon cancer stages, normal colon epithelium (obtained at colon cancer surgeries and obtained from patients without cancer undergoing surgery for diverticulitis), and tissue from adenomatous colon polyps. Cell line controls and non-colon normal tissue controls are also provided on the TMAs.

Table 1.

To construct these arrays a collection of 478 colon tissue specimens were selected and divided into four non-overlapping case sets, case sets 1-4. Each case set consists of 119-120 colon tissue specimens plus controls as described in Table 1. Each case set was arrayed into four replicate TMA blocks to address tissue heterogeneity as illustrated in Figure 1.

We currently provide material from two of the four replicate blocks for each case set. An investigator receives a minimum of 2 sections from case sets 1-4, a total of 8 slides. If an investigator wants more than the minimum, sections can be provided from the other array blocks. An example of the map of one TMA section is available.

Figure 1.

Figure 1. Four cores are removed from each donor block in a case set. One of these cores is inserted into each of 4 recipient array blocks to create replicate blocks A-D for each case set. A minimum of 2 sections, one from each of 2 of the replicate array blocks, is provided.