Goals & Mission

The UCLA Tissue Array Core Facility is a research-based laboratory of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine whose goal is to create, develop and utilize high-throughput tissue microarrays (TMAs) for in situ biomarker validation projects, to facilitate the effective use of the clinical biological materials through the use of this platform, and to make these tools available and affordable to the UCLA research community.

Utilizing the large pathology archive and extensive linked clinical information available we provide UCLA researchers a unique resource to study differential gene expression in a variety of diseased tissues, concentrating predominantly on human cancers.

Large-scale studies including tumors encompassing differing stages and grades of disease are necessary to efficiently validate putative biomarkers and ultimately associate gene expression with phenotypes and clinical outcomes. The TMA is designed to meet this need.

In addition, the technique is widely applicable to any medical research discipline in which paraffin-embedded tissues are utilized, including structural and developmental biology, and metabolic studies.