Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization with Concomitant Immunofluorescence in Human Pancreas

The ability to identify the presence of non-host cells in human pancreas with concomitant characterization of cell phenotype is particularly important to facilitate studies of transplantation and microchimerism resulted from pregnancy. The steps involved in processing tissue for fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) can however remove epitopes that are crucial for immunofluorescence and antigen retrieval strategies for immunofluorescence can negatively influence FISH. We describe a robust method to analyze X/Y chromosome constitution and cell phenotype simultaneously on the same pancreatic tissue section.