I've never seen celloidin, collodion, or what have you - solutions of cellulose nitrate in ethyl ether or other flammable solvents - used for cytologic cell block preparation.
Cellulose nitrate is simply too much of a fire and explosion hazard to allow it in a histology lab at all. Thermo Scientific Richard-Allan Scientific - or whatever they're called this week - offers HistoGel, a proprietary gel for cell block preparation. I've seen it used, and at least in some labs it works well. It's supposed to be quite expensive, in an area where the bean counters come down hard. HistoGel requires formaldehyde fixation. Many people used to use trypticase soy agar (TSA) purloined from the microbiology lab, but I'm not sure they use it any more. An old technique perhaps stiil in use is adding plasma to the cell block pellet, and then clotting the plasma with thrombin. I don't have any experience with it. People have a lot of trouble preparing cell blocks. Bob Richmond Samurai Pathologist Knoxville TN _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet