Written by Bob Sandor
Scientific lab refrigerators and lab freezers are substantial investments necessary to insure compliance with storage regulations for pharmaceuticals, vaccines, enzymes, blood, plasma, cultures and similar products. If these units malfunction due to improper operation and maintenance, your organization is not only subject to being cited for non-compliance by the FDA and/or other regulatory authorities but also the financial loss of the contents in the lab refrigerator or lab freezer.
While lab refrigerator and lab freezer manufacturers such as Norlake Scientific provide detailed instructions on the proper setup and use of these units, operating procedures should be detailed in your company’s operations manual to govern their use and maintenance during their service life. As one example, floor plan reconfigurations in your lab or manufacturing facility may change, resulting in the lab refrigerator or lab freezer being moved. Wherever they are relocated, care must be taken to insure the move is done properly.
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Written by Rachel Kohn
Enzymes are the catalysts of the biochemical reactions that comprise metabolism; they do their job without changing themselves in the process. Enzymes are responsible for bringing about almost all of the chemical reactions in living organisms. Without enzymes, these reactions take place at a rate far too slow for the pace of metabolism.*
Enzymes being studied by researchers must be stored in a enzyme freezer at temperatures in the region of -10 to -25˚C (+14 to -13˚F). When stored at higher temperatures enzymes gradually denature and lose catalytic activity. Proper storage conditions are essential to ensure that the enzymatic activity on the label is indeed the activity inside the bottle. I have many not so fond memories of failed experiments in graduate school because the rather costly purified enzyme suspensions failed to perform as expected, all due to inadequate storage.
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Written by Rachel Kohn
A controlled environment is critical to maintaining the potency and safety of pharmaceutical products across a supply chain stretching between R&D laboratories, manufacturing facilities, transportation and storage at healthcare facilities. Examples of controlled environments include laboratory refrigerators, laboratory freezers, blood bank refrigerators, chromatography refrigerators, laboratory incubators, stability chambers and temperature test chambers.
Equipment such as this as manufactured by Norlake Scientific and offered by Tovatech is designed and constructed to comply with standards developed and promulgated by the FDA, the AABB, the Red Cross and other agencies. Once the equipment is purchased, however, the facility operator assumes the responsibility of assuring it is installed and maintained according to FDA and related guidelines.
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Written by Rachel Kohn
Pharmaceutical laboratories, manufacturing facilities and healthcare providers must establish standard operating procedures to assure safe vaccine storage. Because many vaccines must be kept frozen to maintain potency it is important to select the correct laboratory freezer and institute practices to be followed by laboratory or healthcare facility personnel responsible for vaccine storage.
Lab freezers as offered by Norlake and available from Tovatech come in several sizes. While size is important, the critical purchasing decision is deciding between a manual defrost laboratory freezer and an auto-defrost laboratory freezer.
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