Thanks to all of you who gave me suggestions/tips/advice on how to deal with
the OCT biopsy in a microfuge tube.  It was actually in a freezer vial, so
cutting the tube with what was potentially infectious didn't seem like such
a good idea, however, a quick touch and some pre-chilled forceps did the
trick.  Luckily, orientation was not such a problem since the OCT/biopsy was
pretty flat.  However, when I placed the piece in a pre-chilled base mold
(this part went fine), and then covered with OCT (while on the cryostat
freeze bar) the OCT caused the originally frozen OCT to melt. The biopsy
floated up into the rest of the block, leaving a huge air bubble where the
biopsy used to be.  

All in all, the tissue looked horrible, but I was able to get the needed
information out of it.  We are not sure if the architecture degradation was
the result of shipping at -20 C for > 1day (which I know such storage
greatly affects the kidney tubule architecture) or the collapse happened
during the embedding.  I am still looking for better handling suggestions
for the later steps.  Someone suggested having them ship the 20 gauge needle
core biopsy in Michele's transport media.  Is this really better than having
it shipped properly embedded in and OCT block?  What are the ways other
people receive cryostat specimens (of kidney biopsy if possible) from areas
with greater than same day shipping ranges?


Noelle Patterson
Naval Medical Research Center
Bethesda, Md
pattersonn@NMRIPO.NMRI.NNMC.NAVY.MIL