[Histonet] Re: processing polymers

[Linda Jenkins]

Julee,

You asked:

"I'm from the experimental surgery unit of the dept. of Orthopaedic
Surgery and some of our projects right now use scaffolds(poly
carbolactone, poly-lactic and poly-glycolic) for the study of tissue
repair. Our usual processing and paraffin embedding procedures
dissolves away the scaffold. Would you know of any procedures for
paraffin sections we could use that would leave the scaffold intact so
that it can be viewed in slides."

Actually, I do.  It is quite common for the scaffold to dissolve in routine 
paraffin techniques.  We have found that doing a frozen section OR 
processing and embedding in glycol methacrylate(depending on the polymer) 
works well.  I will send you a copy of my PowerPoint presentation.  I 
prefer to do a pilot study on each polymer to determine what works best.  I 
do paraffin, frozen, glycol and methyl methacrylate processing and 
embedding on each type of polymer...usually one will work just fine.
         Regards,
         Linda


Linda Jenkins, HT
Clemson University
Dept. of Bioengineering
Clemson, SC 29634-0905
864.656.5553
http://www.ces.clemson.edu/bio/research/histo/histo.htm