The solution for antigen unmasking​

​Our Unique Retriever solves the problem of staining formalin fixed tissues. This is an affordable solution to all known major problems with immunohistochemistry on paraffin sections. Ease of use combined with high reproducibility of the results will give you the best quality immunostaining. The Retriever is a bench-top model for thermally processing slides of formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded tissues prior to immunostaining.​​​

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​The model has been designed to ensure identical processing of all the samples during a processing cycle, as well as the identical processing of the samples in individual sessions. The Retriever preserves processed tissues.​​​

With Retriever you can

• Run antigen unmasking in up to 6 different buffers in one cycle. This is very important when you are trying to find the most appropriate buffer for epitope recovery or need to process the same tissue in different buffers for different antibodies.

• Use a minimal quantity of processing buffer (thus always using a fresh one without high cost, and not jeopardising the identical processing  and thus identical staining on tissues  from different cycles)

• Recover the epitope of interest for a strong staining while preserving the tissue and cell morphology (quite important in diagnostic pathology)

• Get identical results every time even in experiments that are performed months apart. This is especially critical for retrospective research that involves IHC on large collections of tissues that may not be all available at once. Using Retriever gives you the confidence that all stainings will be performed on identically retrieved sections

• Just do it. Load the sections, pour the buffer, close the lid and push the button. No training, not "tricks of the trade", no waiting when the diagnostic pathology has time to do it for you.

• Use either standard Citrate of EDTA buffers, or our buffers (new Universal set of buffers arrives this fall)

• Not to worry that the machine will stop working. This only happened twice in while history of Retriever, and both times it was the result of improper exploitation. In any case,  you have a full year of replacement guarantee.

How does the Retriever work?

It looks as a pressure cooker, and basically it is a pressure cooker. People ask us sometimes what temperature and pressure are used (to imitate it with some other pressure cooker). However, this information will not be helpful, because the key factor is not what temperature and pressure it reaches, but how: the heating profile is dictated by a microchip controlling the process, and the proper heating profile is tested during production for every individual unit of the Retriever. Sensors control the heating profile, for the temperature and pressure to be reached at a certain pace and over certain time. We did a lot of tests to find this optimal setting. When the required temperature is reached, it will be kept for several minutes. After that the slides will be cooling over 2 hours. Specially designed thermal walls of the unit control the speed of cooling of the inner chamber and slides. This is an important stage of the process as well: it gives proteins a chance to re-fold back some domains after the processing. 

Who would benefit from using our Retriever?

• Investigative Pathology, where the high quality of staining (a picture may be published!) is required

• Any lab that is short on technical personnel: any student or post-doc can process slides for the staining without using much time

• Small routine pathology labs, where a limited number of slides should be processed daily

• Anyone who uses highly valuable samples, such as tissue arrays or unique tissue samples

• Simplicity and reliability of the unit ensures the safety of your sample, and a high quality antigen unmasking.