Specimen preparation equipment is lightening the workload at the MRC Cancer Cell Unit on the Addenbrooke's Hospital campus in Cambridge
Recently purchased specimen preparation equipment from Leica Microsystems is lightening the workload at the MRC Cancer Cell Unit in Cambridge.
The Hutchison/MRC Research Centre is located on the Addenbrooke's Hospital campus and comprises a new MRC Cancer Cell Unit and the University of Cambridge, Department of Oncology.
John Brown, senior laboratory technician in Nick Coleman's group, explained: "Our work is concentrating on the development of screening programmes for different cancers using novel antibodies.
Last year the workload increased to such an extent that we needed to automate our specimen preparation and turned to Leica for a complete array of equipment, including a tissue processor, microtomes, an autostainer and coverslipper. The autostainer is especially good because we can run PAP stains and haematoxylin and eosin stains concurrently without needing to change reagents." Pam Stacey, a senior laboratory technician working mainly on cervical cancer in Dr Coleman's group, added: "I routinely use the autostainer and coverslipper and both are very easy to use.
The slides are treated with antibodies against a number of proteins, mainly mini-chromosome maintenance MCM -2 and -5, which we use as cell markers for research and cancer diagnosis.
The equipment is very robust and, as someone who came from a laboratory where we had to coverslip everything by hand, I think the coverslipper is wonderful!"
