CDP Breast Cancer Progression TMA (Case Sets 3-8)

The CDP breast cancer progression TMA, constructed from case sets 3 through 8, provides high statistical power for comparisons of marker prevalence across breast cancer cases that are node-negative at diagnosis, node-positive but not metastatic at diagnosis or metastatic at diagnosis. The DCIS and normal breast tissue cores on the breast cancer progression TMA are 1.5 mm in diameter, and the remaining cores on the TMA are 0.6 mm in diameter.

To construct this tissue microarray the CDP selected a collection of 679 breast tissue specimens which was divided into six non-overlapping case sets, Case Sets 3-8, each representing between 112-115 breast tissue specimens.

Because of the large number of cores included in the design, it was not possible to place all the cores required for an experiment into a single paraffin array block; instead, three blocks were required. Thus each complete array set requires the assembly of sections from three case sets.

Sections are currently cut and distributed from the blocks constructed from case sets 4, 6 and 8, which together comprise a complete array set. Click Here for the Excel map of sections ^[XLS] or Text alternative for map of sections.

**Table 1.**Specimens represented in the CDP Progression TMA case sets.
Type of Case	Case Set #4	Case Set #6	Case Set #8	Total
Node-Negative Cases	28	28	26	82
Node-Positive Cases	26	27	27	80
Metastatic Cases	27	26	27	80
DCIS Cases	11	8	10	29
Normal Breast Tissue	23	23	23	69
Control Specimens	18	18	18	54
Grand Total Cores	133	130	131	394

Each of the six case sets was arrayed in quadruplicate to address possible tissue heterogeneity. For example, four cores were taken from each of the 115 breast tissue specimens in case set 4 and from the 18 control specimens to develop 4 replicate TMA blocks that each contains 133 cores. The same process was then used to construct quadruplicate TMA blocks for the other five case sets. At this time only sections from Case Sets 4, 6 and 8 are being distributed.

The design is such that for a request to be filled using the breast cancer progression TMA, successful applicants are required to accept a minimum of two sections (from different replicate blocks) from each of the three different case sets, for a total of 6 sections (3 case sets x 2 replicate sections from different TMA blocks.) For example:

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