Ian Clarke:

First I want to say that every lab is different.  I have folks who moonlight here from the AFIP, and they have very little problem with storing cut slides from most antibodies for months.  They just use metal slide files with paper dividers to seperate controls for different antibodies and these serve as the labels as well.  We have adopted that practice here too.  Although to begin with we were using plastic 50 slide boxes that some purchased controls will arrive in, but with over 75-80 antibodies that is a lot of boxes to open and shut and look through to pull controls.

We cut only 1-2 weeks worth of control slides.  We found there was too much inconsistancy when we cut slides too far ahead.  Although I'm sure there are certain antibodies that can last 6 months, because at one time we were cutting that many ahead.  However, our current main Immuno Pathologist is focused on insuring accurate results 100% of the time and any variables we find are eliminated.  

Refrigerating your control slides may help them to last longer.  

The slides are cut on Plus slides, and then left to dry overnight at room temperature and then filed.  I couldn't believe they were not damaged, but in our experience the control tissue is ok even though it touches the back of the other slide. 

The following antibodies we have had trouble with and always cut fresh:

TTF-1
Renal Cell Carcinoma
Inhibin
Hepatocyte
ER
PR
Her2Neu
Bcl6

Being histology though, your results are sure to differ.  

Have a good day.

Ross Stapf
Histology Supervisor
Washington Adventist Hospital
Takoma Park MD 20912


>>> "clarke.ian"  01/29/03 12:49PM >>>
Hi all,
At present we cut our control sections for immuno at the same time as the
test which can be very time consuming when you have a big run of immuno's.We
would like to have a bank of control slides so all we would need is to cut
the tests as we already do this in special stains.What do other people do
and is there some reason why this might not be a good idea?I have thought
about the loss of antigenicity as a time factor but from papers I have read
they talk about the section being stored for months.However the time factor
does not seem to be a problem for tissue blocks.
 Another item I am looking for is the e-mail address of Sherwood Medical Co
of Saint Louis if they have one.
Thanks in advance
Ian Clarke
Histopathology/Cytopathology Department
Craigavon Area Hospital
Northern Ireland