Semi -automated standardisation of melanin bleaching procedures of heavily pigmented melanocytic lesions for immunohistochemical analysis on an automated platform.

Semi -automated standardisation of melanin bleaching procedures of heavily pigmented melanocytic lesions for immunohistochemical analysis on an automated platform. Br J Biomed Sci. 2019 May 30; Authors: Orchard GE, Gabriel J, Shams M, Fernando P, Satoc J, Nwokie T, Ismail F, d'Amico C Abstract The diagnosis of heavily pigmented melanocytic lesions is problematic. This is often compounded by lack of visibility of nuclear detail of tumour cells due to physical masking by melanin pigment. Similarly there can be colour merging of chromogenic final reaction products with melanin, making evidence of antigenic localisation problematic. There are a number of melanin bleaching techniques available, the most widely employed method for immunohistochemical assessments is the use of dilute hydrogen peroxidase. All methods to date have involved the bleaching of melanin as a manually performed primary step before loading subsequently bleached slides onto automated immunohistochemical platforms. Here we define a semi- automated bleaching procedure that allows full integration on one of the most widely employed automated IHC staining platforms (Roche Ventana BenchMark Ultra). The bleaching protocol was defined on the BenchMark Ultra and involved the assessment of 24 histological cases of heavily pigmented malignant melanoma lesions (13 cutaneous and 11 metastatic) routinely fixed processed and paraffin wax embedded. Completion of the bleaching was as...
Source: British Journal of Biomedical Science - Category: Laboratory Medicine Tags: Br J Biomed Sci Source Type: research