When I was heavily involved with IHC and IHC research projects, I tried to
encourage all to use Zinc Formalin. The reason for using either fixative
is because the antigen sites are better preserved. The reason one might
have problems with these fixatives is you need to dilute out the primary
more, and possibly the secondary.I would suggest doing a series of
"checkerboard" dilutions.
Marianne




On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Tony Henwood wrote:

>
> > John,
> > our experience with formalin substitutes such as alcoholic formalin and
>zenk
> > formalin have not been good.  We have a tendency to get increased
> > non-specific background staining.
> >
> Have you tried to further dilute your localising antibodies. Perhaps
> the antigens are better preserved after the different fixatives.
> Tony Henwood
> www2.one.net.au/~henwood
>
>