[Histonet] Zinc formalin on human renal biopsies

[Gayle Callis]

Teri,

The renal biopsies (thin, needle bx) were fixed 12 hours, were sent
overnight to our lab and on occasion were fixed longer.  Well fixed and
then we hand processed these to avoid any overexposure to dehydrants.
Pathologist did not like VIP short schedule, but we did changes using
vacuum for each change. 

You did not say IF you made up your zinc formalin in house or bought it
from Anatech?  We never made this in house as some people complain about Zn
formalin precipitating out during processing.  We never had this problem,
and attributed this to a proper buffering, making up of commercial solution
by Anatech - whatever they do/did was superb for our needs. 

Remember we were working with human tissue, although Diane Sterchi and I
gave a workshop and compared Zinc formalin to NBF on animal tissues without
problems.  

Hmmm full moon causes problems!!??? 


Gayle Callis
Research Histopathology Supervisor
Veterinary Molecular Biology 
Montana State University - Bozeman
PO Box 173610
Bozeman MT 59717-3610
406 994-6367 lab 

 

At 01:15 PM 4/27/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>In working through our processing schedule dilemma, we fixed some
>pancreas in NBF (overnight), and fixed some in Zinc Formalin for 3
>hours, followed by water wash and storage in 70% ethanol.  We found that
>using a variety of processing schedules, the NBF fixed pancreas looked
>good with routine 30 min/station (with 2 hours total time in paraffin),
>all the way down to 10 min/station (with 80 min total time in paraffin).
>The Zinc Formalin fixed pancreas looks dry and brittle still, even with
>the short processing schedule.
> 
>It was amazing to see how firm and grayish the tissue was as compared to
>the NBF fixed tissue, within even an hour of fixation time.
> 
>We will try a hand-processing schedule for these to see if we can get
>the processing perfect for the ZnF pancreas.  Our answer to this problem
>could be that we need to limit the amount of time it is in fixative.
>Gayle, how long were the kidney biopsies fixed before processing?
> 
>
>Teri Johnson
>Managing Director Histology Facility
>Stowers Institute for Medical Research
>1000 E. 50th St.
>Kansas City, Missouri  64110
>tjj <@t> stowers-institute.org
>
>
> 
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