The Application of the Tissue Microarray (TMA) Technology to Analyze Cerebral Organoids

Abstract

“Multi-Omics” technologies have contributed greatly to the understanding of various diseases by enabling researchers to accurately and rapidly investigate the molecular circuitry that connects cellular systems. The tissue-engineered, three-dimensional (3D), in vitro disease model “organoid” integrates the “omics” results in a model system, elucidating the complex links between genotype and phenotype. These 3D structures have been used to model cancer, infectious disease, toxicity, and neurological disorders. Here, we describe the advantage of using the tissue microarray (TMA) technology to analyze human-induced pluripotent stem cell–derived cerebral organoids. Compared with the conventional processing of individual samples, sectioning and staining of TMA slides are faster and can be automated, decreasing labor and reagent costs. The TMA technology faithfully captures cell morphology variations and detects specific biomarkers. The use of this technology can scale up organoid research results in at least two ways: (1) in the number of specimens that can be analyzed simultaneously and (2) in the number of consecutive sections that can be produced for analysis with different probes and antibodies.