Deliveries happen throughout the day and if I keep the placental tissue sections for fixation it cannot be processed before next morning. This duration becomes more than 12 hours. When I look into the literature, fixation is to be done for 7-12 hours for immunohistochemistry. This is practically difficult to maintain.
How can I increases the time for fixation? Will it affect the quality and quantity of proteins during IHC?
Thank you.
It should be fine because we are doing often but never had any problem.
Gud luck,
Hi Alka,
The concentration of formalin is optimum at 4% when it comes to fixation of a tissue, i never came across any issues when my samples were stored in formalin for over 12 hours.
Hi. I have not specifically done research in placenta tissue, but as a pathologist have collected all tissues form both human and experimental animals and fixed and storage fixed in 4 % PFH and in 10 % formalin. The later keeps the tissues for extended periods of time, years. 4% PFH needs to be replaced periodically for a fresh one. For fixative penetration is best smaller tissue samples, but even a whole human brain and a placenta etc. can be immerse in 10% formalin for extended periods of time. Of course all depends of what you are doing with the tissues. For inmunohistochemistry in our lab we have recovered archive tissues fixed in 10% formalin and use the microwave technique to unmask the antigen. Enclose is a book chapter we published sometime ago with full description of the methodology. Hope it helps