Removal of mercuric chloride crystals from fixed tissues
AssigneeVentana Medical Systems, Inc.
InventorsKimberly Christensen, Annie Pomerantz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Mercuric chloride precipitates are removed from biological cell samples fixed with mercuric chloride and held in an embedding media, by contacting the biological cell samples with an aqueous solution containing a surfactant, and incubating at a temperature in excess of about 50° C. for a period of time.
Claims10
A method of contemporaneously removing mercurous chloride precipitates and an embedding media from a biological cell sample, comprising:
- providing a biological cell sample fixed with mercuric chloride and held in an embedding media;
- contacting said biological cell sample with an aqueous solution containing a surfactant, at temperature in excess of about 50° C. thereby heating the embedding media sufficient to separate the embedding media from the biological cell sample;
- and
- removing mercurous chloride precipitates and the embedding media contemporaneously from the biological cell sample by removing the aqueous solution containing a surfactant from the biological cell sample.
A method of removing mercurous chloride precipitates from a paraffin embedded mercuric chloride fixed biological cell sample following deparaffinization, wherein the biological sample is fixed on a slide, comprising:
- contacting said deparaffinized biological cell sample on the slide with an aqueous based conditioning fluid containing a surfactant at a temperature in excess of about 85° C. for 8 to 90 minutes;
- and
- removing the aqueous based conditioning fluid containing a surfactant from the biological cell sample on the slide, thereby removing the mercurous chloride precipitates.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.