Learn About the Histology and Comparative Pathology Facility
On Thursday, October 31, 2019, at noon, during the Pathways to Success at the Einstein Cores bimonthly seminar series, held in the Forchheimer third-floor lecture hall, learn how resources within Einstein’s Histopathology and Comparative Pathology Facility can aid your research. Scientific director Dr. Amanda Beck will offer an overview of the core’s services and the capabilities of its facilities. Then hear how Drs. Claudia Gravekamp and Sridhar Mani are already putting these services to good use, working with the facility’s team.
![Scientific director Dr. Amanda Beck and her team offer a broad range of services to augment research capabilities]()
Scientific director Dr. Amanda Beck and her team offer a broad range of services to augment research capabilities
About the Histology and Comparative Pathology Facility
The Histology and Comparative Pathology Facility provides comprehensive histology and histopathology support to Einstein investigators and the Animal Housing and Studies Facility. The facility performs most aspects of tissue evaluation, from necropsy to the final histological diagnostic evaluation. Its team supports quality translational research by evaluating how the genetic background, environment, and sex of the animals affect the study results or gene phenotype. The goal of the facility is to provide a high-quality histology service as well as to be a resource for understanding and translating in vivo data.
Facility Services
- Tissue preparation — fixation or freezing, decalcification, and routine processing to paraffin embedding
- Full-service necropsy, histology, and cryosectioning (including many special stains)
- Immunohistochemistry and enzyme histochemistry of tissue sections
- Necropsy and histopathology reports
- Rental cryostat and microtome
- Routine hematology on a variety of laboratory animal species
It’s Been Said
The Histology and Comparative Pathology Facility is available to provide comprehensive, expert, and cost-effective necropsy, histology, and histopathology support to Einstein and Montefiore investigators. In the past three years, we’ve served over 175 Einstein and Montefiore laboratories with a full range of services, including tissue fixation and processing, paraffin and frozen embedding and sectioning, standard and specialized histochemical stains, enzyme histochemistry, and immunohistochemistry/immunofluorescence. We’re also happy to provide hands-on training for investigators in animal necropsy, tissue fixation, tissue sectioning, and immunohistochemical techniques. These one-on-one training sessions can cover general techniques or be adapted to any specific needs of your laboratory. We understand that histology is likely a small part of your overall project, so we’re happy to work with your budget to make sure you get the information you need in a cost-effective way.
Amanda Beck, DVM, DACVP
Scientific Director, Histology and Comparative Pathology Facility
The immunohistochemistry (IHC) expertise available through the Histology and Comparative Pathology Facility was key to our studies seeking to unravel immune responses to our microbial-based immunotherapy in the tumor microenvironment (TME) of pancreatic cancer, funded by NIH and the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PCAN). Through collaboration with Dr. Beck, we developed the IHC in our lab, and we were able to demonstrate that treatment with Listeria bacteria expressing tetanus toxoid led to the formation of multiple lymph node-like structures in close contact with and inside pancreatic tumors. These structures, or LNS, containing over 100 follicles with T cells, resulted in a significant effect on pancreatic cancer. Our data suggest that these LNS provide the T cells that eventually kill the tumor cells. We plan to use IHC to further unravel these pathways. It’s a pleasure to collaborate with Dr. Beck, who also is closely involved in analyzing the therapeutic effects of our Listeria-based immunotherapy on tumors and metastases, as well as potential toxic effects in various preclinical animal models of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Beck is included as a co-author on a publication about this study.
Claudia Gravekamp, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Microbiology & Immunology
The Histology and Comparative Pathology Core is an indispensable core histology resource for all investigators in and out of Einstein. On a personal note, Dr. Beck and her team were instrumental in performing tissue acquisition and preparation studies for our mouse experiments. Dr. Beck assisted with histologic reads in a rigorous blinded fashion, and these methods employed by the core have been instrumental in our ability to acquire grants and score well in rigor and authentication. More recently, Dr. Beck performed a project based on our ongoing work investigating breast cancer, which we recently submitted for publication. The core has been helpful in advising us with how best to use our limited finances and technical time, and assisting with experimental design. Overall, this is a wonderful resource for the College of Medicine that we have only recently exploited.
Sridhar Mani M.D.
Professor, Medicine; Molecular Pharmacology; and Genetics
Posted on: Tuesday, October 29, 2019