About microarrays, our core technology

Until now, microarrays have been used primarily as research tools. Now, Pathwork Diagnostics is helping to usher in a new era in which microarrays are used in clinical diagnostics. The company’s unique processes take microarray-based data and enable the development of clinically useful diagnostic offerings in oncology.

Microarrays consist of probes that are arranged or "arrayed" on a glass chip. These probes are small fragments of DNA that represent a section of a specific gene's entire DNA sequence.

Testing tumors: RNA is extracted from a sample of tumor tissue. The target is prepared from the RNA, labeled with a fluorescent marker, and spread over the surface of the chip. The target binds to complementary gene-specific probes on the array, in a process called hybridization. The relative fluorescence intensity of each gene-specific probe is then measured—and the greater the degree of hybridization, the more intense the signal, indicating an increased level of gene expression.

Microarrays are robust tools for gene expression diagnostics because they measure expression levels of large numbers of genes simultaneously and can answer multiple diagnostic questions with one array.

The Pathwork Tissue of Origin LDT measures the expression pattern, comprising more than 1500 genes, in a challenging tumor and compares it to expression patterns of a panel of 15 known tissue types, representing 90% of all solid tumors, in order to identify the primary type.

Learn about ordering the test through Pathwork Diagnostics Laboratory.
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