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! 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?

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

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.