Mathew,
    There are systems you can purchase to store tissues or OCT blocks in
an orderly fashion in -80 freezers.  We place individual blocks in
Fisher Twirl 'Em sterile sampling bags 3x5 inches, label and place in a
correctly sized cardboard box that then fits into stainless shelves.
These shelves hold 12 boxes each stacked in 4 rows of 3 boxes each.
Four shelves will fit onto one shelf of a -80.  The Freezer is numbered,
the boxes are numbered and the racks are numbered ie.. 5/10/48 would
interpret as freezer #5, rack # 10 and Box #48. This is an example of
what you could set up for storing your tissues.  
    As Rene mentioned,tissues will keep as long as they are properly
preserved, sealed and the -80 freezers do not go down; or when the
freezer goes down, someone rescues its contents BEFORE everything
melts--those emergency contacts again!  I also have cut frozen sections
from tissues that have been frozen for years.  I have also cut paraffin
sections from blocks over 20 years old that cut well when properly
stored.  I have also had some that the bugs had dinner from so there was
no tssue left! 

Okay, Joe, your turn! :-)

Sharon Osborn
DNAX, SPBioPharma
Palo Alto, CA



Mathew DeGutes  wrote:
  I have a couple questions. In the lab I work in we have started to
accumulate a number of experiments worth of tissue blocks that we would
like to keep for reference at later dates. Generally tissue survives
better while still embedded in a block than when in slide form, so I was
curious as to what sorts of methods others here employ to keep order and
good preservation of blocks in -80s? Up until now we have been just
keeping individual sets of blocks in Ziplock bags, but it has gotten to
be unwieldy. I am looking for any suggestions of a good way to keep the
blocks well preserved and easily recovered in -80s.
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