This invention provides a technology for isolating nucleic acids from wax-embedded samples that is superior to the current state of the art. Standard protocols with this objective typically comprise dissolving the wax-embedded sample in an organic solvent, extracting nucleic acids from the organic solvent into an aqueous buffer, and isolating the nucleic acids from the aqueous buffer. The technology described here includes using hexadecane as the solvent to dissolve the sample, precipitating and washing the extracted nucleic acids, and dissolving the nucleic acids in a lysis buffer that includes NP40 and SDS. By implementing the reagents and techniques described in this disclosure, the user can obtain a product that has better yield, less degradation, and contains more unique mRNA transcripts for subsequent sequencing and analysis.