Blanca, Here are my feelings on this, and I am sure a lot of other folks have feels here too, so please chime in.
1 - I feel that most clinical labs are more on the IHC bandwagon and research labs are IF (with the exception of IgG staining in kidney biopsies or bullous disease in skin- which is because the antibodies don't like formalin fixing (if this is now wrong I am sorry, I haven't been in a clinical lab in quite a while). Research labs are often also working with genetically encoded fluorophores such as GFP, YFP, mCherry 2 - Formalin fixation (especially over fixation) can often lead to a large amount of autofluorescence in the 488 region, which is a common place for secondary antibodies and also GFP. Research labs have a lot more control over their fixation protocols. 3 - The microscopes commonly available to clinical labs are bright field scopes and in research labs fluorescent scopes 4 - Fluorescence can provide more contrast to a positively localized fluorophore, but sometimes at the detriment of viewing the overall morphology of the tissue like you get with bright field IHC and a nuclear counterstain. 5 - Research lab protocols are often very 'experimental' and can lead to increased tissue damage, which again is not viewed under the fluorescence microscope (as much). Clinical labs have lots of experience and also defined protocols that work well in the IHC / bright field space. 6 - the only real difference is the detection method, you can use any primary antibody with either ABC/ impress / enzyme based methods or with fluorophore conjugated secondaries. So, in short - no *real* reason, but mainly that is the way things shook out. I could go on about researchers not understanding how to take photos on a bright field scopes too, but that is too broad a statement, but as a core director I saw them being more comfortable with the fluorescent methods :) mills On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 6:09 AM, Blanca Lopez via Histonet < histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> wrote: > Hello! > I just need a help with a simple question...Is anyone can explain me what > is the purpose between performing immunohistochemistry and > Immunofluorescence? > Thanks :) > > Blanca Lopez > Histotech (ASCP) > UTSW Tissue Resource K1.210 > Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center > UT Southwestern Medical Center > Telephone: 214-648-7598 > Email: blanca.lo...@utsouthwestern.edu > > > ________________________________ > > UT Southwestern > > > Medical Center > > > > The future of medicine, today. > > _______________________________________________ > Histonet mailing list > Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu > http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet > -- Caroline Miller (mills) Director of Histology 3Scan.com 415 2187297 _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
