Visikol® HISTO™

Overview

With the introduction of CLARITY, scientists have battled to adopt tissue-clearing protocols into their research due to the multitude of several disciplines required to successfully image and examine tissue in 3D.

For this purpose, Visikol HISTO was developed as the first commercially available, user-friendly, non-destructive, and quick tissue-clearing technology. With the availability of Visikol HISTO, users are capable of easily envisioning biological tissues in 3D by pairing tissue clearing with immunofluorescence and/or fluorescent proteins.

To assist the technology’s adoption, a suite of resources, tutorials, and guidebooks have been developed and offer scientists with direct one-on-one support.

Image Credit: Visikol Inc.

Image Credit: Visikol Inc.

Features

Which reagents are best for clearing the tissue?

• The Visikol HISTO tissue clearing technique comprises three reagents: Visikol HISTO-1, Visikol HISTO-2, and Visikol HISTO-M. Visikol HISTO-1 and Visikol HISTO-2 are developed as a two-step clearing process for use with all tissues above 1 mm in thickness wherein several problems below 1 mm in thickness could be cleared with Visikol HISTO-1 only.
• Visikol HISTO-M has been developed for usage with 3D cell culture models (for example, spheroids, organoids, microtissues) in high-throughput applications where such models are below 1 mm in thickness.

Comparison to other techniques

• Visikol HISTO is known to be a solvent-based clearing method and is similar to BABB, uDISCO, 3DISCO, iDISCO, and vDISCO.
• The significant variation is that the Visikol HISTO reagents are less severe of solvents and will not result in any severe shrinkage or tissue damage as these other solvent-based tissue clearing methods. Normally, solvent-based techniques are quick and user-friendliness and need no special equipment. 

Benefits of Visikol HISTO

• Quick tissue clearing
• User-friendliness
• Low-priced for all scientists
• Reversible for follow-up 2D H&E/IHC
• Undestroyed to morphology
• Tailored protocols for all applications
• No special equipment is needed
• Consistent with FP, IF, and other fluorescent labels 

Video Credit: Visikol Inc. 

Why Visikol HISTO for tissue clearing

Various tissue-clearing methods have been developed over the past few years, each of which has special benefits and disadvantages. But the adoption of tissue clearing into research as a trustworthy tool for bio-imaging has been quite restricted, as every method needs particular adaptations for varying tissue labels, types, fixation techniques, imaging modalities, and custom microscope objectives.

Visikol Inc. has come up with the Visikol HISTO technology in collaboration with more than 400 research labs throughout the US and EU and has built the Visikol HISTO Protocol Guidebook to guarantee that tissue clearing is simple to adopt for all applications.

Visikol HISTO is inexpensive, user-friendly, and quick. Moreover, Visikol HISTO offers reversible clearing, implying that 3D data could be validated against conventional histology.

Applications

• Visualize biological tissues in 3D
• Reversible clearing