 The tissue parts that specifically stain by this dye become blue to bluish-green after staining and are called "Alcianophilic" (comparable to "eosinophilic" or "sudanophilic").Alcian blue staining can be combined with H&E staining, PAS staining and van Gieson staining methods.Alcian blue can be used to quantitate acidic glycans both in microspectrophotometric quantitation in solution or for staining glycoproteins in polyacrylamide gels or on western blots.