[Histonet] Issues with rat mandible sectioning and staining

[Herrick, James L. (Jim)]

Good morning Everyone!!

We have embedded several rat mandibles in MMA (we add Perkadox to the MMA to initiate) but are having issues with sectioning. We would like to keep the sections close to a 5 um thickness and need to stain with an H&E. Unfortunately, we are having issues with sectioning and staining. The sections do not look too bad coming off of the microtome, but following attachment, deplasticization and staining, the sections do not stay together very well making it very difficult for our pathologist to evaluate. Any advice on how to improve our quality on these samples would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!!

Jim