[Histonet] Re: Lung histology

[Erickson, Jamie E]

HI  Zakky,
                       I've worked on a lot on mouse lung and the process of embedding can depend on what you are looking for or your pathologist opinion.
In my OVA models  I was looking at inflammation around the main stem bronchi and looking at goblet cell hyperplasia  using PAS stain. Because we used an intranasal  route of administration we wanted to look to see if there was a difference in PAS at the main stem bronchi compared to  distal secondary and tertiary bronchi so we chose to embed sagittal.
                                I isolated the left lobe that is the lobe with no accessory lobes then trimmed in  to the main stem but not to close,  this was done to make a flat surface for embedding. Then you can cut into the lung until you get a nice full or almost full length of the main stem bronchi. I did PAS on these and image analysis to quantitate amount of PAS production. Perfusion of the lungs was a must for this view.
There are lots of papers that do this by cross sections as well and stain with collagen deposition stains like sirus red, so you'll have to see what fits your study.
Whatever you choose be consistent with your location of sectioning, so you can compare samples across groups that are taken from the same anatomical location.

Hope that helps  Good luck,

Jamie Erickson (ASCP) HTL
Pharmacology Dept.
Abbott laboratories