Tissue microarray - a high-throughput molecular analysis in head and neck cancer.

With the identification of a number of novel markers having diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic significance, the application of tissue microarray (TMA) has become a valuable tool for validating candidate markers in cancer research. The TMA is a high-throughput technique, which allows large-scale analyses of hundreds of archival clinical tissue samples using the 'array' approach. This paper highlights briefly its robust technology, technical aspects of its construction, and the validity of the TMA results for oral pathology diagnostics by reviewing data from recent literature particularly with reference to head and neck cancer.