For easy starting we offer a HOPE® Trail Kit with 100 ml HOPE® I, 1ml HOPE® II and 500 g Low Melting Paraffin sufficient for fixation of 20 tissue samples. HOPE® = Hepes-glutamic acid buffer mediated Organic solvent Protection Effect - is a new formalin-free tissue conservation technique for tissue fixation, including subsequent paraffin-embedding and sectioning that allows the complete analysis of all types of human or animal soft tissues. HOPE is a combination of amino acids and glucose blended together with an organic buffer. For fixing tissue according to the HOPE® standard fixation protocol, HOPE® I and HOPE® II solution (catalog nr. BM-HL002C001), acetone and Low Melting Point Paraffin (52-54°C, catalog nr. BM-PL003S2K ) are required. During HOPE® fixation, tissue samples are incubated in HOPE® I solution, then in HOPE® II solution, followed by a dehydration with acetone and subsequent embedding in low melting paraffin. No alcohols or aldehydes (formalin, glutaraldehyde) are used. This technique avoids cross-linking of macro- molecular structures during the process which opens up new opportunities to characterize tissues out of paraffin blocks. As a result many "cryo-type" antibodies are working on HOPE® fixed tissue sections and many antibodies are working without any heat pretreatment or proteolytic digestion steps often necessary for formalin fixed tissue sections. There is no "over-fixation" with HOPE®, as is known with formalin, when keeping the tissue specimen in the fixation solution. In addition to that RNA, DNA and proteins are conserved in high quality, thus making subsequent applications possible like e.g. PCR, RT-PCR, Northern-Blot, Immunohistochemistry, Western-Blot and many others, out of the same tissue blocks.