Table 1. An overview of various commonly used clearing methods.
| Method | Timescale | Toxicity? | Tissue integrity | Preservation of endogenous fluorescence | Staining/labelling | Validated tissues | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SeeDB | Several days | No | No change in tissue size | Yes | IHC | Rodent embryos and brain | Ke et al. (2013) |
| Clarity | 8 days | No | Slight increase in tissue size | Yes | ISH and IHC | Rodent brain, human brain, zebrafish | Chung et al. (2013) |
| Cubic | 9 days | No | No change in size | Yes | IHC | Mouse brain, spleen kidney, heart, lung pancreas | Susaki et al. (2014, 2015) |
| 3Disco | 2-9 days | Yes | Tissue shrinkage | Yes, up to 2 days | IHC | Embryos, heart, kidney, rodent CNS | Dodt et al. (2007); Ertürk et al. (2012) |
| Eci/ETOH | >5 days | No | Tissue shrinkage | Yes, for several weeks | IHC | Mouse kidney | Klingberg et al. (2017) |
| Eci/ProppH9 | 25 h to 5 days. high-throughput compatible | No | Tissue shrinkage | Yes, for several weeks | IHC and ISH | Cerebral organoids, and adult and larvae of axolotl, Xenopus and Drosophila | Current manuscript |
CNS, central nervous system; IHC, immunohistochemistry; ISH, in situ hybridization.