---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 20:15:39 -0800 (PST)
From: M. Brown <marianb@u.washington.edu>
To: maliniakrm@worldnet.att.net
Cc: histonet@pathology
Subject: Nexes Special stainer

Hello Rick,Regarding the Vantana Nexes:It has been my experience with this
stainer that it does not replace one experienced histotechnologist or
histotechnician. For one it takes time to set this stainer up. You have to
do pre-treatments i.e. HIER retrievals off this unit, you still have to
place labels on the slide, computer time etc.etc.;not much faster than
doing your own stain manually. Also, this stainer does very poorly with
Nuclear Antigens such as ER,PR,BCL2,CD5,TTF-1,MIB-1 and many others. I
have found that certain antibodies actually degrade with the heat that is
generated on the Vantana Stainer. Manual staining is by far the most
optimum, especially when you are dealing with extremely sensitive
antibodies. The cost of the reagents and the detection system are
extremely high and in the long run does not outweigh the price of a
qualified
technician. The Vantana is a machine and cannot substitute the
troubleshooting skills of a qualified technician.
Marianne