Soak the slides in xylene until the coverslips are removed. Rinse off residual medium from the tissue sections in 2 changes of fresh xylene; followed by descending grades of alcohol starting from an absolute alcohol (2 changes) ending in 95% (1 change),  followed by DI water. Proceed to counterstaining.

If I were you, I will call the technical service of Dako. They know the exact component in it. The medium does not dry completely that is why we cover the edges with nail polish.

For slides mounted with per mount, I throw the slides in Xyline for 10 minutes, coverslips falls. But in your case, dako component is secret, ask them, they will guide you properly.

Dear Emille,

If the slides are mounted in a sollution of Buffer, you can put the slides in the same buffer that you use. Automatically the slides will follow down.

But in your case you use Dako. I agree with Dr. Sibhash.  The component is "secret". So, first I recommend contact the Company. 

Good Luck

Hi Emilie,

Here we would probably soak the slides in PBS then use a blade to loosen the coverslip where it has been stick with the nail polish. Then just rinse a few times with more PBS and counterstain as normal.

Good Luck!

If they are mounted in the normal media used for histology: place them in Xylol for one to three days, the cover can be removed.

If they are mounted in a water-based medium: as the supplier

Put the slide in a cuvette with xylene.

Greetings from Belgrade.

For histology slides mounted in DPX, I use to put them in  xylene to remove coverslips.

You should use alcohol or water, till the coverslip detaches easily.  With IF I would avoid xylene 

If mounted in DPX, place them in Xylene. Greetings

For fluorescence mounting medium incubates yours slices in PBS or distilled water until the coverslip come off (it may take time to come off). Then you can wash yours slices in PBS to wash mounting medium.

PBS keeps your immunostaining better than distilled water. In your case, better to use distilled water.

Good luck.

Hi everyone, thanks for your answers !

I tried to incubate the slides in PBS à 37°C overnight, and the day after, the coverslips came off by themselves.

I did a counterstaining, which worked perfectly, and the primary staining was still there.

So, if the same pb happens to you, you can try it !

put the slides for 1 day at xylol or Rot-histoll then 100----70% alcohol--D.W and PBS and repeat what ever stain you want

The best solving material for the slide glues is Xylol 100%, Put the slides in it until the coverslips will be detached

Soak the slides in xylene until the coverslips are removed. Rinse off residual medium from the tissue sections in 2 changes of fresh xylene; followed by descending grades of alcohol starting from an absolute alcohol (2 changes) ending in 95% (1 change),  followed by DI water. Proceed to counterstaining.

Thank you Lilian by your answer. It  help me.

After preparation and staining of my IHC slides, I found some air bubbles under the cover slip and I want to get rid of that so I decided to incubate my slides in Xylene for 3 days, I am afraid that I have to run samples again through Alcohol to DW for re-hydration the matter that may impact my staining, what do you recommend me to do ? stain my slides again or condones the consequent hydration procedure ?

I perform IHC on whole mount organs or on cryosections, not on paraffin-embedded slides, so I didn't put the slides in Xylene, but in warm, and it was efficient to take off the slides. I stained my slides again, but the staining was really noisy after that so I'm not sure it's a good solution... The organs were unquantificable after that... One colleague thold me to change the secondary antibody when I re-stain some samples... If anybody experimented this...

Mr. Tartor,

If you stained your IHC with DAB as the chromogen, don't worry about leaving the slides in xylene for 3 days, DAB will not be affected; hence the stained end product (brown color) will remain the same in intensity. Secondly, no need to re-hydrate. Right after the coverslips are removed, leave for 1-5 minutes in xylene to dissolve hardened mounting medium, then re-coverslip. 

Put  slide into the cuvette with xylol for 60 minutes.

Lilian Antonio

Hi, Dr. Lilian

I want to extract DNA from blood smear slides. I am using xylene to dissolve the mounting medium, but the time for the coverslips to come out varies from 3 days to over 20 days. The mounting medium is all the same for the slides-called Cytoseal 60. The slides are over 2 years.

Do you have any ideas about the reasons that cause the difference in the amount of times to dissolve mounting medium and the potential ways to standardize the time, so the DNA extracted from the blood won't be affected too much

Thanks

Jia

Guys. I think you all are missing the point. Dako fluorescent mounting medium is aquous polymer based medium. What Emilie Simmonet has done is the right way. She has stained the sections for immunofluorescence and mounted them in an aquous mounting medium for fluorescence microscopy. Soaking the slides in PBS even at RT would dissolve this mountant and relieve the coverslip without damaging the cells/section. Xylol is best used for Organic resin based permanent mountants like DPX, however DPX is not used for fluorescent stained sections.

I agree with Arumugam (that Emile is doing the correct procedure for fluorescence aqueous mounting), except in the statement about DPX. Many people do use dehydration followed by clearing in Xylene or Histoclear followed by DPX for fluorescence work. It does work as a substitute for aqueous mounting...with the added bonus of clearing the tissue better and being more of a more compatible refractive index with oil immersion lenses for high resolution imaging.

I put old slides (from more than two years ago into) into fresh xylene under gentle agitation, and after 5 days they eventually separated. I replaced xylene with fresh xylene one time, and I also kept adding xylene in case of evaporation. For new slides (two weeks before) it only takes 3.5 hours. After separating coverslip, I kept samples in fresh xylene for few minutes to ensure dissolving precipitate of old cytoseal xyl.