Alcian Blue Stain - Manufacturing and Purity

Manufacturing and Purity

The historic Alcian Blue varied so much batch to batch that only the 8GX (e.g. not even the 8GS) batch produced by ICI was later decided to be the biologically useful ones. Commercially available batches usually contained about 49% of the actual dye and rest used to be Sulfate, boric acid, dextrin and other impurities and by variou sextraction methods up to 80% pure extracts can be made. Actually the dye does not necessary contain all 4 substituents but might contain 2 or 3 of them and have various geometric isomers. But anyhow the manufacture of 8GX by ICI had stopped by Mid-1970s because of environmental hazards and very small lots were available that were received from alternate sources. Only recently Alcian Blue has been re manufactured in bulk using safer procedures but the newer product does not have the suffix X (or S) since the manufacture process (and the exact product composition) is somewhat different.