Opening Address of the President: Pathology 2001: Odyssey and Navigation

Abstract

The growing number of molecular pathologic tools that are currently available require material with good long term preservation of morphology, nucleic acids, and antigenic structures. However, pathologic investigations of tissues done at a molecular level are often hampered by the fixatives in use. We thus endeavored to design a new fixing system, including subsequent paraffin-embedding and sectioning, that makes complete pathologic analyses possible, with special consideration of immunohistochemistry (IHC),in situ hybridization (ISH), and molecular pathology. The optimized HOPE(Hepes-Glutamic acid buffer mediated Organic solvent Protection Effect) fixing technique allows us to preserve and extract high molecular weight DNA and RNA of >20 kbp suitable for downstream applications, such as PCR and RT-PCRfrom HOPE-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues that are up to 5 years old. This technique will most probably lead to new impacts on molecular pathology.