Processing of Paraffin Embedded Tissues for Flow Cytometry

Aneuploidy (abnormal numbers of chromosome sets) and a rapidly dividing cell population have been well known characteristics of malignant disease. Cell ploidy is now also recognized as a reliable indicator of tumor aggressiveness and response to treatment, and flow cytometry is a relatively new procedure for quantitating nuclear DNA content as an index of ploidy. The technique has been utilized to analyze cells in body fluids or cells extracted from fresh solid tissues. We have used recently developed methods to analyze cells taken from formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues. (The J Histotechnol 10: 109,1987)