I'd like to know just how these antibody manufacturers come up with
expiration dates.  I've been using a home-grown antibody for a specific
study for years.  The diluted antibody is kept frozen and the positive and
negative control slides have stained the exact same over all of these years!
I say if the controls work, why throw out an antibody?

Jim

____________________________
James E. Staruk, HT(ASCP)
Mass Histology Service, Inc.
www.masshistology.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Sebree Linda A. [mailto:la.sebree@hosp.wisc.edu]
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 9:09 AM
To: 'Lee & Peggy Wenk'; Smith, Sherry A. (Histology);
histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: RE: Use of outdated antibodies


To those of you saying that one can use outdated antibodies per CAP, can
anyone site a CAP reference/regulation stating unequivocally that this is
allowed as long as the quality is assured by the use of controls.  Our
internal QA/QC person checked into this extensively back in 2000 and the
most she could come up with is that CAP would not site a lab for this
practice but CAP did not at that time come out with any statement that the
use of outdated antibodies (or other reagents for that matter)was OK.

Please, if anyone knows of any further development on this issue in terms of
CAP regulations, let us know.  This would allow us to maintain antibodies in
our inventory that for now we have dropped due to low volume requests.  We
have a cutoff of 12 requests/year; anything less than this we drop from our
inventory because it is not cost effective to maintain, given the shelf life
limitations.

Linda A. Sebree, HT(ASCP)

(snip)