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IHC - really tough wax!! - Having trouble dewaxing slides (Mar/01/2011 )

Hello,

I recently got some slides from another lab, and I just cannot get the wax off of them! :blink: I've emailed them asking for help but have yet to hear back from them, so thought somebody on here might have some answers.

Normally we dewax with a series of three histoclear washes followed by 2 abs EtOH washes and one 70% EtOH wash. This didn't work... so we put the slide in a 60 degree oven for about an hour.... wax still didn't budge... didn't even melt in the slightest! And now the tissue isn't looking very happy either. :(

Does anybody have any experience with hardcore wax that won't budge?

-steffi333-

you may have to bite the bullet and use xylenes or you could try histosol instead of histoclear.

-mdfenko-

Fixed the problem. Trick was to heat slides in a 60 degC oven for circa 1 hr, then place in histoclear IMMEDIATELY and shake for about 5 five mins. Then proceed with the remaining histoclear washes and ethanol etc.

-steffi333-