THE LABORATORIES at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, UK, perform up to 120,000 immunohistochemistry (IHC) tests each year, giving it one of the largest workloads in IHC and in situ hybridisation (ISH) in the country. In order to modernise IHC and ISH staining for cellular pathology at its Hammersmith, Charing Cross, and St Mary’s Hospital sites in London, the trust has selected the Bond platform from Leica Microsystems.
Ten Bond platforms from Leica have been installed at Imperial
A total of ten new Leica Bond systems have been installed, promising higher throughput and better consistency of staining for a wide range of assays.
“In order to standardise our practices – and provide a more consistent approach to servicing and support across all three laboratories – we wanted to switch to fully automated immunostaining for both routine and research IHC and ISH. Leica Microsystems was able to offer the best solution for our needs, combining good staining quality with high throughput”, said Donna Horncastle, laboratory manager for cellular pathology at Hammersmith Hospital.
“Installation has gone very smoothly in all three laboratories, with only minimal disruption, and we have been very impressed with the staining quality of the platforms. These systems offer considerable efficiency savings, and because we no longer rely on batch processing of samples, turnaround times have improved.
The Bond immunohistochemistry platform is coupled with a comprehensive menu of Novocastra antibodies and companion diagnostic products for HER2 IHC and HER2 FISH.