I will be having FFPE blocks cut onto slides, I would like to know what would be the best method to store slides for long term storage. I don't want the slides to go bad. I am worried about oxidation and hydrolysis.
Thank you in advance,
Maria
Paraffin blocks and H&E stained slides can be stored indefinitely, in the dark - but you have to check them every so often to look for air bubbles (requires removing the coverslip and re-mounting) and maybe molds (depends on the storage environment and mounting medium). We put H&E slides in slide boxes or slide drawers (commercially available) that stack.
We usually store both - paraffin embedded tissue blocks and H&E stained slides in environmentally controlled storage rooms, in addition to formalin fixed tissues. Hope that helps.
Hello Maria Rodriguez-Aguirre
If you wanna store slides for future staining, you better keep them in the fridge into slide boxes as Ignacia III Braga Tanaka said before. However, some say it is not recommended store slides for a long time, especially if you are used them for immunohistochemistry —they say that sections could lost antigenicity.
But if you talk about stained slides, you can store them for a very long time. Any changes can be seen according to the mounting medium type. But you can re mount them.
And always store the paraffin block, where the samples are safer, and you can go back and cut them when you need it. We keep blocks in boxes or drawers, but no environmental control at all.
Good luck!
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Histology
- Sectioning