Doe anyone know where to obtain Gurr's Fluoromount?

bradscopegems · Joined: 19 Jun 2007 Posts: 2 Location: Cambridge UK

This xylene-based mounting medium has been used by a lot of people for
preparing permanent slides for fluorescence microscopy. It has a very high refractive index, so renders tissues transparent. Useful dyes, including safranin and eosin are not soluble in it. Most important of all, unlike Canada Balsam, it is non-fluorescent. I understand that it consists of a mixture of methacrylate polymers in xylene and shrinks a great deal during setting.

With the takeover of BDH by Merck and subsequent sale of the BDH range of products to VWR, all trace of this product seems to have been lost.
Does anyone know where to get it? Can you make it by dissolving Perspex
(Lucite) in xylene? I am familiar with Cargille Meltmounts: they are no substitute because they tend to fluoresce strongly. Also DPX deteriorates on aging. In preparing test slides for confocal microscopy I am seriously hampered by the lack of this material.
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Brad Amos

Yury_P · Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 1

I think the item you are looking for is still manufactured by Richard-Allen Scientific. They call it Cytoseal. This xylene-based mounting medium is made of high-quality synthetic resins and contains an antioxidant to inhibit stain fading and yellowing of specimen. Rapid drying medium allows specimen examination soon after application. It will soon become a supplied product from Microscopes.com.

bradscopegems · Joined: 19 Jun 2007 Posts: 2 Location: Cambridge UK

[quote="Yury_P"] Thanks, Yuri. The solvent in this seems to be toluene
rather than xylene, but it would probably solve my problem, if I could get it in the UK.
Only Cole-Parmer seem to supply it here (in cases costing about $120 each), and I can't buy it from them because the wretched computer ordering system just installed in my lab, allows me to order only from Fisher Scientific.
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Brad Amos