Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Tissue microarray (TMA) technology can be used to detect biomelecule in tissues. However, the diameter of organization used in TMA is only 0.6 mm, and tumor cells has heterogeneous. Therefore, the reliability of test results of TMA remains unclear.
OBJECTIVE: To examine the reliability of TMA for detecting PBK/TOPK compared to the original paraffin sections containing normal human adult type Ⅱ alveolar epithelial cells, embryonic pneumocytes, primary focus of lung carcinoma and lymph node metastasis.
METHODS: The TMA technology was used to construct a paraffin tissue microarray containing 760 tissue cores, including normal adult human lung, embryonic pneumocytes, primary focus of lung carcinoma and lymph node metastasis, primary focus of lung adenocarcinoma and lymph node metastasis, primary focus of lung small cell carcinoma and lymph node metastasis, as well as primary focus of lung large cell carcinoma and lymph node metastasis. The immunohistochemical SP method was employed to determine the PBK/TOPK protein expression in TMA and original conventional paraffin sections. The positive unit of PBK/TOPK protein and positive rate of expression were assessed quantitatively with the Leica Q500MC image analysis system using results from the paired conventional full sections as controls.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: There was no significant difference in PBK/TOPK expression between TMA and paired conventional full sections in positive unit and positive expression rate, and the relative deviation was less than 0.6%. TMA detection of PBK/TOPK protein expression in lung carcinoma is highly concordant with the original paraffin sections. TMA is reliable in detecting PBK/TOPK protein expression of lung, embryonic lung and normal lung tissue.