[Histonet] alternative to using pap pen?

[Gayle Callis]

You never said how many slides you work with in a day?  If only 30 or so,
the pen is still a workable solution to your problem.  

We have mounted sections on hydrophobic barrier slides made for us by Erie.
 You can purchase ready made barrier, Plus charge slides from Erie - their
selection is huge. You would have to get lab doing sectioning to buy these
slides and use them to reduce work on your end.  Pricey, but worth it.  If
you have to reduce size of area where antibody is applied for specific
volume of 100 ul or less, pap pens are still worth the effort.  We like
ImmEdge pen from Vector, less expensive, excellent barrier and you can see
it. Biogenex sells special hydrophobic barrier slides designed for their
immunostainers for use on their stainers, also pricey.  You may find a
better deal at Erie.   

To keep sections from drying out, you can minimize that problem by the
following. It helps to put a protein carrier i.e. very high quality bovine
serum albumin,  in your diluent buffer.  We sometimes add 0.1% BSA,
purchased from Jackson, protease and immunoglobulin free or a normal serum
matching host of secondary or a nonrelated species i.e. goat, horse, swine,
donkey serum (0.2% or so), etc.  We add serum to all buffers and diluents.
Tween 20 is also added (0.05% to aid flow of reagent over section, besides
it other benefits). 

Good luck.  

At 04:14 PM 4/7/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>I am going to be undertaking a large immunohistochemistry staining 
>project. To ensure that our slides do not dry out during the primary 
>antibody incubation we have decided to use pap pen. With such a large 
>amount of slides this may be quite a task and so I would like to know if 
>anyone has found a good alternative to the pap pen. The slides will 
>arrive with the samples already on them.
>Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
>Thanks
>
>
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Gayle Callis
MT,HT,HTL(ASCP)
Research Histopathology Supervisor
Veterinary Molecular Biology 
Montana State University - Bozeman
PO Box 173610
Bozeman MT 59717-3610
406 994-6367 (lab with voice mail)
406 994-4303 (FAX)