The Finesse Microtome from Thermo Fisher Scientific is being used by the Parkinson's UK and MS Society Tissue Bank for the preparation of tissue samples for its neuropathological examinations.
The Parkinson's UK and MS Society Tissue Bank supplies the research community with high-quality Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS) tissues.
The implementation of the Finesse Microtome in the joint tissue bank is said to have made diagnosis easier and accelerated throughput.
In addition, the quality and the size of the sections produced has been enhanced, enabling the tissue bank to fully maintain the anatomical orientation of the samples that it prepares, which improves both reliability and speed of diagnosis.
The tissue bank, jointly funded by Parkinson's UK and the MS Society, procures brain, spinal cord and other tissues that are bequeathed by donors, making them available to scientists investigating the causes of and treatments for diseases.
Prior to the implementation of the Thermo Scientific Finesse Microtome, the tissue bank had been experiencing challenges with the quality of the samples that were being produced using its existing microtome.
The instrument could only handle small block sizes, which impacted upon the quality of the sections that were being created.
Samples often had to reside across a number of different slides, which resulted in significant loss of tissue view.
According to the tissue bank, one of the fundamental factors in deciding to implement the Finesse Microtome was the instrument's ability to handle larger block sizes.
The larger blocks enable the tissue bank's neuropathologists to view important adjacent brain structures in one section, avoiding the need to switch between different slides.
This has improved the speed and reliability of diagnosis, according to Thermo Fisher Scientific.
The tissue bank can also now supply larger block tissue sections to researchers.
In addition, the Finesse Microtome provides the tissue bank with the benefits of ease-of-use and high performance, the company added.
Dr David Dexter, a scientific director at the tissue bank, said: 'The quality of the tissue samples that we produce greatly impacts on the performance of the tissue bank and, ultimately, the quality of the research.
'Since bringing the new instrument into the laboratory, its capability to handle larger blocks as well as the enhanced quality of the sections it produces has meant that our neuropathologists' ability to diagnose cases has dramatically improved,' he added.
