NAR Molecular Biology Database Collection entry number 905

http://www.bioinformatics.leeds.ac.uk/tmadb/

Sharma-Oates A.^1,2, Quirke P.¹ and Westhead D.R.²

¹Academic Unit of Pathology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS1 3EX, UK
²School of Biochemistry & Microbiology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

Contact a.sharmaoates@leeds.ac.uk

To analyse TMA output a relational database (known as TmaDB) has been developed to collate all aspects of information relating to TMAs. These data include the TMA construction protocol, experimental protocol and results from the various immunocytological and histochemical staining experiments including the scanned images for each of the TMA cores. Furthermore the database contains pathological information associated with each of the specimens on the TMA slide, the location of the various TMAs and the individual specimen blocks (from which cores were taken) in the laboratory and their current status i.e. if they can be sectioned into further slides or if they are exhausted. TmaDB has been designed to incorporate and extend many of the published common data elements and the XML format for TMA experiments and is therefore compatible with the TMA data exchange specifications developed by the Association for Pathology Informatics community. Finally the design of the database is made flexible such that TMA experiments from several types of cancer can be stored in a single database, which incorporates the national minimum data set required for pathology reports supported by the Royal College of Pathologists (UK).

This work is supported by Yorkshire Cancer Research.

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