VF200/300 &600  Compresstome™ microtome--Precisionary

 AHMSIC 2008 (新一代振动切片机).doc

Compresstome™ microtome

Compresstome™ is a new family of microtomes developed from our company’s patented technique. The unique features of this technique are specimen embedding and tissue compression just before tissue slice is made, allowing for much thinner slices to be cut with minimal effort and better image quality.

Biological specimen, live or fixed, is glued on the plunger of a specimen tube and embedded with low gel point agarose within the tube. The front end of the specimen tube is smaller to form a compression lip towards the agarose-specimen block. When agarose-specimen block is pushed forword by the plunger, it is compressed by the compression lip. The extruding specimen is sectioned by a sharp blade at the front end of the specimen tube. Much better slice quality is achieved when specimen is compressed. The compresstome™ family of microtmes overcome the specimen move/wobble problems and produce high quality slices with excellent viability, consistent slice thickness, flat, and clean surfaces with sharp image.

The compresstome™ family includes four members; the VF-200, VF-300 and VF-600. The compresstome™ VF-200 is designed for electrophysiology experiments. It is a semi-automatic microtome with manual slice thickness adjustment through a micrometer. It is economical and very effective for cutting small quantity of slices. The compresstome™ VF-300 and VF-600 are fully automatic microtomes. They are suitable for preparing large quantity of slices. Within the three, the compresstome™ VF-300 is for live tissue sectioning. The VF-600 is the model for fixed tissue sectioning.

Key features

Very soft tissues and hollow organs are difficult to cut with vibrating slicers. The Compresstome™ VF-200, and VF-300 microtomes can cut these tissues without any difficulties.

Embryonic brain

Embryonic brain is very soft even in icy cold temperatures. Therefore, it is very difficult to cut them into smooth and even slices. With our patented technique, the embryonic brain is stiffened by the compression and is much easier to slice. The VF-family slicers can overcome similar problems in other very soft tissues such as pancreas, skeletal muscles, and intestines.

Warm temperature slicing

Brain tissues are very soft in warm temperature. They are routinely cut in icy cold buffer with vibrating slicers. With the VF-slicers, you can cut brain slices in temperatures close to their physical environment (32° Celsius). Cutting tissues in warm temperature reduces thermal shock to the neurons during slicing, requiring less recovery time and results in healthier slices.

Wet SEM

The VF-200 is the best slicer that has been tested by Quantomix for Wet tissue scanning electron microscopy. Wet SEM requires slices with a very clean and flat surface to keep close contact with the membrane of the specimen chamber. The VF-200 is the only microtome in the market that meets this standard.

Electrophysiology

Electrophysiology requires slicing of live soft tissues. The quality of your experiment depends on the quality of the tissue slice. Your daily productivity also depends on the quality of the tissue slice. The viability of the brain slice, especially the healthy neurons in the top surface layers are crucial to the success of brain slice patch clamp electrophysiology. The Compresstome™ VF-200 and VF-300 produce the highest quality brain slices for these researches.

Our products have tremendous advantages:

Doubling the brain slice viability.

The pre-stress force created by the compression counteracts the mechanical stress of the cutting blade which reduces cell damage during slicing, resulting in healthier slices with more viable cells. There are many good neurons on the top surface that can be chosen for experiment. Greatly increases your productivity.

Older animal and more sensitive brain areas.

Vulnerable tissues of older animals and more sensitive nucleus of the brain can still be sliced with the Compresstome™ VF-200 and VF-300, greatly expanding the range of experiments that you can do.

Smoother and cleaner cutting surface.

The wavy chatter marks or vibration marks indicate the trails of the oscillating blade of the slicer. In the VF-200 and VF-300 microtome, the vibration mark is dramatically reduced from the slice surface.

High quality images.

Images of slices cut with the Compresstome™ VF-200 and VF-300 are sharper ,with fewer scratches and distortion. As seen from the sample images on the slice album page, more details can be observed in these slices.

Reduce thermal shock.

Slicing can be performed in warm temperature (32 degrees C) as well as 4 degrees C. The ability to slice in warm temperature eliminates drastic temperature fluctuation, reducing thermal shock to the tissues.

Quick recovery.

The ability to slice in warm temperature allows recovery in less than 20 minutes.

Consistent slice thickness.

The unique specimen embedding, holding and clamping mechanisms minimizes specimen movement in all three dimensions during slicing. Consistent slice thickness can be achieved. Slice thickness varies less than 5 percent of the slice thickness (250 µm), compared to 10 to 20 percent in classic slicers.

Minimal moving parts and quiet operation.

Every effort is used to minimize mechanical vibration on the Compresstome™ microtome. This allows them to reduce energy precipitating on the slice.

Versatile.

Need to do some immunohistochemistry work as well? The VF-200 and VF-300 are also great at slicing fixed tissues, saving your money and lab space.

Fast cutting.

For vibrating blade tissue slicers, it takes 10 to 30 seconds to cut a slice. The VF-200 and VF-300 takes less than 5 second to cut a slice.

Simple.

The operation of the VF-200 and VF-300 are simpler than that of other vibrating slicers. Close monitoring is unnecessary. No experience is required to operate the device.

Immunohistochemistry

The Compresstome™ VF-600 is specially designed for cutting fixed tissue slices for floating section immunohistochemistry. Because of itsmany advantages, it is the machine of choice for floating section studies. The Compresstome™ VF-600 can cut slices as thin as 10 microns, equivalent in thickness to 7 microns of dehydrated paraffin-embeded slices.

Advantages over paraffin microtome

Cutting with the Compresstome microtomes requires 3 simple steps. Fix the tissue, embed in agarose, and cut.

Save Time: It saves you 80% of the time.

Saves material: You can skip 6 procedures: no dehydration/hydration, don't need to deal with waxes, or with antigen retrieval.

Better data: Less treatment means higher quality and more dependable data.

Slices in under an hour: Combined with ultra-rapid microwave fixation, the VF-600 can produce histology slices for surgical pathology within an hour.

Advantages over cryostat

Simpler Protocol

There are only three steps for the Compresstome™ protocol --tissue fixation, tissue slicing, and free floating staining. No over night sucrose incubation, no OCT compound embedding, no liquid nitrogen freezing. This saves you time and money.

Stronger signals

The Compresstome™eliminates the freeze-thaw step(s) that can lead to degradation in proteins and their antigenicities. This reduces false negative results for low level signals.

Better histology image

There is no ice crystal formation with the Compresstome™ slice. Cellular structure and histology image are better preserved. Further EM study is possible.

Wider cutting window

The cyrostat can slice tissues between 4 to 40 microns. For experiments requiring thicker slices, the cryostat slices cracks easily. The Compresstome™can cut slice thickness from 8 micron and up, with no upper thickness limit.

Versatility

Compresstome™ can cut fresh tissue slices for tissue culture, or for brain slice recording.

Convenient

The footprint of the Compresstome™ is very small. It can be easily moved around from counter to counter.

Affordable

The total cost for the Compresstome™ is only a small fraction of that of a, cryostat. The slicer itself is much cheaper. The savings on material cost and time is even bigger.

Compresstome™ VF-600:

The compresstome™ VF-600 is our newest fixed tissue slicer. It is designed for histologists who need higher quality tissue slices in their experiments.
The VF-600 microtome integrates new structural design and stablization techniques that further innovates on the basis from our previous generation of fixed tissue microtomes.
The compresstome™ VF-600 is mainly used for free-floating immunohistochemistry and free-floating in situ hybridization experiments.

Technical specs

* Advance Speed: 0-20 mm / s, adjustable
* Return Speed: 20 mm / s, fixed
* Vibration Frequency: 0-20 Hz, adjustable
* Vibration Amplitude: 0.6 mm, fixed
* Z-axis Vibration: < 1µm
* Blade: double edge razor blade
* Cutting Angle: 13 o fixed (standard)
* Thickness Adjustment: digital adjustment, automatic
* Minimum Slice Thickness: 7µm
* Maximum Adjustable Thickness: 250 µm
* Slice Thickness Resolution: 1 µm
* Maximum Tissue Diameter: 12.5 mm (standard tube), 15.5 mm (large tube)
* Specimen Compression Ratio: 10%
* Maximum Tissue Length: 25 mm
* Cutting Mode: single/continue selectable
* Bath: 120 x 60 x 30 mm
* Power Source: DC 13-15 V
* Power Consumption: 4 W
* Dimension ( L x W x H ): 330 x 240 x 190 mm
* Weight: 7 kg