Ace Therapeutics has extensive experience in the pathology of psychiatric disorders. With years of experience handling paraffin and frozen sections, immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, and creating and applying special stains, we have become experts in the field of histology of psychiatric disorders. Let us handle the sectioning and staining so that you can save significantly on your research time.

Introduction of Sectioning and Staining in Psychiatry

Histology is the study of cellular structure and its formation into tissues and organs and forms the basis for much of the understanding of cellular function and psychiatric disease processes. In addition to being used in the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, histological techniques can be used to facilitate the study of the cell biology of psychiatric disorders. For example, one researcher used the Neo-Timm procedure to stain frozen postmortem hippocampal sections from subjects suffering from major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and non-psychiatric controls and eventually found neuronal sprouts in the hippocampus of subjects suffering from bipolar disorder.

Fig. 1 Representative hippocampal section showing Timm staining in hilar and supragranular regions. (Dowlatshahi D, et al., 2000)

Sectioning and Staining Services

Ace Therapeutics is committed to providing a full range of histology services. We perform routine fixation, embedding, sectioning and staining using standard histology methods, including special positioning of tissues, serial and/or step sections, and a range of immunocytochemical analyses. We can handle frozen tissues (fresh frozen and fixed frozen) and sections and perform a wide range of biochemical and immunohistochemical staining on them.

Our Workflow

• Tissue trimming
• Tissue fixation with any fixative of your choice at the optimal fixation time
• Tissue embedding in paraffin blocks or embedded in OCT blocks
• Tissue sectioning at standard or custom thicknesses through a slicer or cryostat, depending on your experimental needs
• Floating sections captured in the wells of tissue culture plates or tubes, mounting the sections on slides
• Standard and specialized staining of sections, or immunohistochemical staining

What Can We Help You Achieve in Psychiatry?

• Antipsychotic treatment outcome testing
• Neurobiological studies of psychiatric disorders
• Provides important insights into the underlying pathology of disorders such as schizophrenia
• Labeling of axonal connections
• High resolution labeling of normal and pathological myelin sheaths
• Localization of degenerating neurons

Service Process

Ace Therapeutics is staffed by professional histologists with years of experience and training. We are committed to providing high quality histology services related to psychiatry at affordable competitive prices and fast turnaround times, so please feel free to make an inquiry if you are interested in sectioning and staining services.

Reference

1. Dowlatshahi D, et al. Increased hippocampal supragranular Timm staining in subjects with bipolar disorder. Neuroreport. 2000, 11(17):3775-3778.