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The Mummy Tissue Bank at Manchester Museum provides a new resource for Egyptian research. As Dr Lambert-Zazulak explains, new techniques of analysis and the spate of new questions about ancient diseases place this initiative at the front line.

We compared the preservation of antigens of various naturally mummified human tissues from the Atacama Desert, Southern Peru with matching samples from Egyptian mummies obtained from the Manchester Museum Mummified Tissue Bank. We studied intervertebral discs and joints, various soft tissues, major blood vessels, brain meninges and skin. Immunolocalisation of structural proteins, intracellular intermediate filaments and neural markers varied from sample to sample and required cumbersome and lengthy procedures but was generally more successful in naturally mummified tissues from the Atacama Desert. Our findings confirmed our experimental data which showed that when using the same antigen retrieval methods, the investigated proteins from naturally desiccated human tissues retained their antigenicity better than those which were in contact with natron and especially those which were also treated with resins

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