Research

Shared Resources

Critical Technologies for Tissue Services

The Critical Technologies for Tissue Services (CTTS) Shared Resource, features the following modules: Tissue Procurement and Banking (TPB), Research Histology (RH), Tissue Microarray (TMA), and Tissue Analysis (TAM).

The five basic and complementary modules of the Resource are outlined below:

Tissue Procurement and Banking
Provision of products from paraffin-embedded archival tissues and banked frozen tissues, including tissue sections for immunostaining or in situ hybridization; thick tissue sections for nucleic acid extraction for PCR; tissue samples for larger extraction protocols (all samples provided with descriptors including patient demographics and pathologic evaluation of tissues); implementation of special protocols for prospective collection of fresh tissue. Service also includes assistance in securing the Yale Human Investigation Committee approval required for any research use of human tissue.

Research Histology
Complete histology services including paraffin embedding and sectioning, frozen sections, routine and special stains, immunostaining, glycomethacrylate plastic services, development of optimized protocols for staining with non-commercial antibodies, antigen recovery techniques, custom fixation and embedding protocols.

Tissue Analysis (TAM)
Ploidy and cell cycle analysis; immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization; Southern, Western, Northern blotting; PCR, RT-PCR, and quantitative PCR; SSCP; LOH; microsatellite analysis; yeast functional assay of p53; determination of clonality; detection of circulating tumor cells.

Tissue Microarray (TMA)
The Tissue Microarray facility enables researchers to analyze several hundred tissue samples within a single paraffin block, providing highly efficient evaluation and assessment of the samples. Tissue microarrays are a method of re-locating tissue from conventional histologic paraffin blocks such that tissue from multiple patients or blocks can be seen on the same slide. The arraying device first obtains a core of tissue from a given patient and secondly, transfers the core to the recipient block. The recipient block, containing samples from hundreds of patients, can then be used to assess patterns of marker expression within a population of patients. One advantage of this technology is that samples are handled identically. Tissue microarrays provide a method for rapid, large-scale molecular analysis of thousands of tissue specimens, therefore providing a powerful technique for evaluating newly discovered molecular alterations in cancer research.

Contact
David Rimm, MD, PhD, Director
(203) 737-4204
david.rimm@yale.edu