Dako: New H&E Solution Delivers World Class Efficiency and Quality

GLOSTRUP, DENMARK–(Marketwire – August 31, 2010) – Dako, a leading player in the field of advanced staining, launches a new staining solution for H&E. The pathology laboratories today are facing many constraining factors; finding and retaining trained laboratory staff is more difficult, and the need for more efficient and cost effective solutions is essential. Dako has designed a new H&E solution to meet the needs of the customer. Today Dako is launching the CoverStainer helping to optimize the laboratory process and delivering high quality, consistent results.

“At Dako, it all starts out with quality. We have transformed all our knowledge within IHC and Special Stains into the H&E area. We have done this not just by focusing on the instrument like many of our competitors do, but we have taken it one step further and are providing a full solution with reagents and instrumentation that work together perfectly. First we standardize and then we automate to secure quality at every step,” Lars Holmkvist, Dako’s CEO, says. He continues: “We are trying to help the laboratory with the most efficient means, so they can control the lab at the highest level of quality, and deliver fast answers to the patients.”

What is H&E staining?
When a patient is confronted with a possible cancer diagnosis, a biopsy is performed and a tissue specimen is taken. The specimen is tested in a pathology laboratory, using a process referred to as Hematoxylin and Eosin or H&E staining. The H&E stain is the first stain in the diagnostic process where a pathologist confirms or rules out a possible disease. The patient will either be able to go home with a ‘normal’ result, or they will be told that more confirmatory testing is required. A majority of the H&E samples can be diagnosed immediately. The pathologist can confirm or rule out a cancer diagnosis.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Herbst at Vivantes in Berlin, Germany has been using the Dako CoverStainer for four months in their routine operations, shares his findings: “You want to have a standardized process. At Vivantes we did a test of around 3000 slides, and our measurements show that the Dako CoverStainer saves us about 43% of the time needed in the older procedure. Our previous process required a lot of attention on the part of the technicians, and this lead to a lot of variation in the results. Now with the Dako CoverStainer, slides have a consistent quality, which makes it a lot easier.”

The launch of the Dako CoverStainer is part of the Dako strategy to be the preferred partner to the pathology laboratory. The addition of H&E staining to the Immunohistochemistry and Special Stains product lines, that Dako has mastered for more than four decades, allows Dako to become a complete staining partner.

Facts about the Dako CoverStainer
The Dako CoverStainer is an automated instrument transforming the H&E staining process by combining the entire process from baking through coverslipping to determine the patient’s first and most critical diagnosis of cancer. The Dako H&E solution combines the advanced Dako CoverStainer with Dako Ready-to-Use (RTU) Reagents and a Dako validated pre-optimized staining protocol. The Dako CoverStainer can process up to 240 H&E slides per hour and the first results in 46 minutes which makes it the fastest in its automated class.