The facility is equipped with state-of-the art instruments in order to provide high quality and highly reproducible results. We also provide training and access to a range of specialised equipment.

• Cassette printer – Thermo Scientific – PrintMate AS

The cassette printer produce highly legible labels to clearly identify your samples, and minimise transcription errors in subsequent steps of processing and analysis.

• Tissue processor – Leica Histocore PEARL

This equipment is designed for the automated dehydration and paraffin infiltration of human, plant and animal tissues. Fixed samples are submerged in a series of increasing concentrations of ethanol, then several changes of xylene, and finally infiltrated with paraffin prior to embedding. Protocols can be customised to the sample’s needs with variable times, temperatures, and pressure and vacuum cycles.

• Embedding station – Leica1150C

Following tissue processing, this station is used to position and embed tissues in molten paraffin wax to form paraffin blocks ready for microtome sectioning.

• 3 Microtomes * – Thermo Scientific HM340E, Leica RM2245

We have three rotary microtomes designed to slice formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues into sections as thin as 2μm. These sections are then picked up on microscope slides and used in a range of staining applications.

• 2 Cryostats * – Leica CM3050S

We have two cryostats available and both are used for sectioning fresh or fixed tissue samples, frozen with gelatin or OCT embedding medium, to provide rigidity and support while sectioning.

• Automated stainer and coverslipper – LEICA AUTOSTAINER XL ST5010 + Coverslipper Leica CV5030

We recently added a programmable automated stainer to our facility, in order to produce consistently high quality stained slides. It is linked to an automated coverslipper, which will then transform your slides into clean coverslipped slides ready for imaging in Microscopy.

• Vibratome * (Leica VT1200S)

This instrument is designed to slice fresh or fixed tissue samples without embedding. Vibratome sections are usually thicker than the ones obtained by using a microtome and are produced by an oscillating razor blade.

• Hybridization oven (ACDBio HybEZ II Oven)

Our Hybridization oven is a convection oven used for RNAscope assays. It is designed to maintain precise temperature and humidity control throughout the chamber and we use it to prehybridize and hybridize probes.

• Pre-Treatment module * (Thermo Scientific PT Module)

Our Pre-Treatment Module offers consistent antigen retrieval that optimizes staining consistency for high quality immunohistochemistry. This instrument allows the entire pre-treatment process of deparaffinization, rehydration and epitope retrieval at the same time.

• Microscopes (Olympus CX23, Leica DM2000 LED, Zeiss Stemi 305)

Our microscopes are used for internal quality control and for pathology assessment of the specimens.

• Slide Scanner * (Hamamatsu NanoZoomer)

Our slide scanners converts glass slides (brightfiled) into high-resolution digital data by high-speed scanning

Note: Instruments with an * can be used in self-service after booking a training session (check our “How to use our service” section for further information.

Last updated: July 4, 2022