Fixatives & Substitutes

Tek-Select® Jay’s Gastro Fixative is proprietary compound formulation prepared using high purity chemicals in deionized water. It includes Methanol stabilized Formaldehyde solution, Zinc and Platinum salts, and Glacial Acetic Acid.

Tek-Select® Jay’s Gastro Fixative is a low-hazard replacement (alternative) for Bouin’s Fixative. It provides all the benefits of Bouin’s Fixative without use of Picric Acid due to safety and environmental concerns and provides comparable quality for tissue fixation at the same time.

Zinc salts react with a range of tissue end groups including amino, carboxyl and sulphydryl, forming reversible reaction products some of which can be removed with a citrate or EDTA wash. Zinc enhances fixation and staining, particularly of nuclei, in a similar way to mercuric chloride. It has advantages in preserving immuno-reactivity when compared to formalin alone excluding the need for antigen retrieval for some epitopes. Zinc salts are far less toxic than mercury salts and disposal of zinc solutions pose no problem.

Addition of platinum compound stems from their success in cancer treatment applications where platinum forms coordination bonds with DNA creating fine cross-linking of their molecules. Platinum-based chemotherapeutic drugs act in a similar manner to classical alkylating agents. They do not have an alkyl group, but instead permanently coordinate to DNA to interfere with DNA repair.

Tek-Select® Jay’s Gastro Fixative provides crisp nuclear staining, preserves structures with soft and delicate features, penetrates rapidly, fixes evenly, and preserves many cellular constituents with minimal alteration.

It is ready to use solution for laboratories and hospitals that prefer a high quality Bouin’s Fixative Substitute without Picric Acid.

All vials and containers are uniformly packaged on an automatic filler line.

Tek-Select® Jay’s Gastro Fixative is recommended for similar to Bouin’s solution applications including bone marrow clots and biopsies, gastrointestinal tract biopsies, testicular biopsies and lymph nodes, animal embryos and endocrine gland tissue.

Also available in other sizes, and prefilled.