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Reliability of the tissue microarray based FISH for evaluation of the HER-2 oncogene in breast carcinoma
D Gancberg1, A Di Leo, G Rouas
1Translational Research Unit of the Chemotherapy Department, Jules Bordet Institute, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. dgan24@hotmail.com
Aims:
Tumour tissue microarray allows the analysis of hundreds of tumour samples simultaneously on a single microscope slide. However, the extremely small tissue samples taken from the original tissue may not always be representative of the entire tumour.
Methods:
The reliability of this new technology was investigated by analysing HER-2 oncogene amplification by fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) from representative slides of the whole tumour and small tissue core biopsies from 29 invasive breast tumours.
Results:
The tissue microarray method had high accuracy; in only one of 29 cases (3.4%; 95% confidence interval, 0% to 10%) were the results discordant with whole tumour analysis.
Conclusion:
Tumour microarray is a highly reliable method for analysing HER-2 oncogene amplification by FISH in human breast tumours.