The UCLA Tissue Array Core Facility was established in the UCLA Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine in 1999 to produce tissue arrays as high-throughput research platforms for biomarker validation and discovery projects.

Basic and translational research can be greatly facilitated by the ability to rapidly evaluate, in situ, the expression of normal and abnormal genes and gene products from hundreds of tissues at once. For example, large-scale studies involving tumors encompassing differing stages and grades of disease are necessary to better evaluate the diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic importance of cancer gene candidates. If performed conventionally, these studies would be burdensome, typically conducted one case at a time, ultimately requiring vast resources of materials and investments in laboratory personnel. In addition, since the amount of tissue often becomes rate limiting for such studies, the ability to procure, fix, store, and distribute tissue for molecular analysis in a manner that minimizes consumption of often unique, precious tumor specimens, is quite important.

In answer to this, tissue arrays, (aka tissue microarrays or TMAs), provide an efficient tool for the study of gene dosage and protein expression patterns in a large number of individual tissues for rapid and comprehensive molecular profiling of cancer and other diseases, without exhausting limited tissue resources.

Post-assay tissue histomorphology is maintained in this process and supports the evaluation of cell types and compartments in the context of intact tissue architecture. In addition, data generated may be collated with multiple other studies on the same tissues supporting multimarker pathway studies.