Histology Core

Provides tissue paraffin processing, embedding, sectioning, H&E staining, and frozen tissue cryosectioning (OCT) services:

Processing removes water from tissue and replaces it with paraffin.

• Thermo Scientific STP 120 Spin Tissue Processor is a compact, bench top, carousel tissue processor. It maintains up to 10 different processing programs, with programmable spinning speed and immersion time in each station
  

Embedding puts processed tissue into a block of paraffin, which provides support for the tissue to be sectioned.

• Thermo Scientific embedding workstation can handle different tissue sizes

Thermo Scientific HM 325 rotary microtome is used to provide high quality paraffin sectioning, usually 5-8 microns.

For cryosectioning, frozen fresh tissue embedded in OCT is accepted; the sectioning thickness is usually 6-10 microns, using cryostat HM550 from Thermo Scientific.

Process samples that include skeletal muscle, liver, brain, adipose tissue, heart, lung, etc.

Staining methods include H&E staining, oil red, and myosin ATPase staining (used for skeletal muscle fiber typing).