Browsing by Subject "Paraffin"

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    An optimized xylene-free protein extraction method adapted to formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissue sections for western blot analysis
    (Universidad de Murcia. Departamento de Biología Celular e Histología, 2017) Mansour, Anthony G.; Abou Khalil, Pamela; Bejjani, Noha; Chatila, Rajaa; Dagher Hamalian, Carole; Faour, Wissam H.
    Deparaffinization of formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues with xylene currently remains a major challenge to the biomedical community. We developed an efficient xylene-free protocol to isolate proteins from archived FFPE human tissue sections. A total of 79 different types of FFPE tissue sections of 8 µm thickness were obtained from various archived FFPE specimens. Deparaffinization was conducted by gently washing each section with around 1 ml of hot distilled water (≈80°C). The deparaffinized tissues were homogenized in lysis buffer, and the isolated proteins were quantified and efficiently resolved using western blot analysis for the presence of Protein kinase B (PKB/AKT) and β-actin. Moreover, a significant amount of proteins was successfully isolated with an average of 2.31 µg/µl. The migration pattern of AKT and β-actin obtained from the specimens was similar to the positive control obtained from protein lysates prepared from in vitro cultured MDA231 cancer cell lines. AKT was successfully identified in all specimens, and β-actin protein was resolved with an efficiency higher than 80%. The entire extraction procedure requires only 20 minutes. This newly developed technique is an efficient, safe, cost-effective, and rapid method to isolate proteins from FFPE tissue sections adequate for molecular analysis.
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    Assessment of murine brain tissue shrinkage caused by different histological fixatives using magnetic resonance and computed tomography imaging
    (F. Hernández y Juan F. Madrid. Universidad de Murcia: Departamento de Biología Celular e Histología, 2015) Wehrl, Hans F.; Bezrukov, Ilja; Wiehr, Stefan; Lehnhoff, Mareike; Fuchs, Kerstin; Mannheim, Julia G.; Quintanilla-Martine, Leticia; Kohlhofer, Ursula; Kneilling, Manfred; Pichler, Bernd J.; Sauter, Alexander W.
    Especially for neuroscience and the development of new biomarkers, a direct correlation between in vivo imaging and histology is essential. However, this comparison is hampered by deformation and shrinkage of tissue samples caused by fixation, dehydration and paraffin embedding. We used magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and computed tomography (CT) imaging to analyze the degree of shrinkage on murine brains for various fixatives. After in vivo imaging using 7 T MRI, animals were sacrificed and the brains were dissected and immediately placed in different fixatives, respectively: zinc-based fixative, neutral buffered formalin (NBF), paraformaldehyde (PFA), Bouin-Holland fixative and paraformaldehyde-lysine-periodate (PLP). The degree of shrinkage based on mouse brain volumes, radiodensity in Hounsfield units (HU), as well as non-linear deformations were obtained. The highest degree of shrinkage was observed for PLP (68.1%, P<0.001), followed by PFA (60.2%, P<0.001) and NBF (58.6%, P<0.001). The zinc-based fixative revealed a low shrinkage with only 33.5% (P<0.001). Compared to NBF, the zinc-based fixative shows a slightly higher degree of deformations, but is still more homogenous than PFA. Tissue shrinkage can be monitored non-invasively with CT and MR. Zinc-based fixative causes the smallest degree of brain shrinkage and only small deformations and is therefore recommended for in vivo ex vivo comparison studies.