Hello, this is in response to the recent xylene substitute questions. We
currently use Pro-Par from Anatech for all deparaffining and clearing steps
for every stain except Masson's Trichrome, where we use xylene instead. We
just purchased an automatic slide stainer and are trying to put our three
major stains on the machine at once, which means we need to combine the
deparaffining and clearing steps. I like xylene for the quality of our
trichrome, but man, its nasty stuff.  Is there a way to use pro-par (or any
xylene substitute really)  for deparaffining and xylene for the last
clearing stage? I will be running test slides trying to figure this out, but
I'm hoping someone might have already have tried combining xylene and other
xylene substitutes. My gut feeling is use one or the other but I might get
lucky. By the way, thanks for the help with the H&E slide stainer
information a couple of months back, we purchased the Mikrom Robot stainer.
-Mary Hess, San Diego, Ca.