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Production of tissue microarrays, immunohistochemistry staining and digitalization within the human protein atlas.

Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE | 2012

The tissue microarray (TMA) technology provides the means for high-throughput analysis of multiple tissues and cells. The technique is used within the Human Protein Atlas project for global analysis of protein expression patterns in normal human tissues, cancer and cell lines. Here we present the assembly of 1 mm cores, retrieved from microscopically selected representative tissues, into a single recipient TMA block. The number and size of cores in a TMA block can be varied from approximately forty 2 mm cores to hundreds of 0.6 mm cores. The advantage of using TMA technology is that large amount of data can rapidly be obtained using a single immunostaining protocol to avoid experimental variability. Importantly, only limited amount of scarce tissue is needed, which allows for the analysis of large patient cohorts (1 2). Approximately 250 consecutive sections (4 μm thick) can be cut from a TMA block and used for immunohistochemical staining to determine specific protein expression patterns for 250 different antibodies. In the Human Protein Atlas project, antibodies are generated towards all human proteins and used to acquire corresponding protein profiles in both normal human tissues from 144 individuals and cancer tissues from 216 different patients, representing the 20 most common forms of human cancer. Immunohistochemically stained TMA sections on glass slides are scanned to create high-resolution images from which pathologists can interpret and annotate the outcome of immunohistochemistry. Images together with corresponding pathology-based annotation data are made publically available for the research community through the Human Protein Atlas portal (www.proteinatlas.org) (Figure 1) (3 4). The Human Protein Atlas provides a map showing the distribution and relative abundance of proteins in the human body. The current version contains over 11 million images with protein expression data for 12.238 unique proteins, corresponding to more than 61% of all proteins encoded by the human genome.

Pubmed ID: 22688270 RIS Download

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HPA (tool)

RRID:SCR_006710

Public database with millions of high-resolution images showing the spatial distribution of proteins in different normal human tissues and cancer types, as well as different human cell lines. The data is released together with application-specific validation performed for each antibody, including immunohistochemisty, Western blot analysis and, for a large fraction, a protein array assay and immunofluorescent based confocal microscopy. The database has been developed in a gene-centric manner with the inclusion of all human genes predicted from genome efforts. Search functionalities allow for complex queries regarding protein expression profiles, protein classes and chromosome location. Antibodies included have been analyzed using a standardized protocol in a single attempt without further efforts to optimize the procedure and therefore it cannot be excluded that certain observed binding properties are due to technical rather than biological reasons and that further optimization could result in a different outcome. Submission of antibodies: The Swedish Human Proteome Atlas (HPA) program, invites submission of antibodies from both academic and commercial sources to be included in the human protein atlas. All antibodies will be validated by the HPA-program by a standard procedure and antibodies that are accepted will be use in the tissue- profiling program to generate high-resolution immunohistochemistry images representing a wide spectrum of normal tissues and cancer types.

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