Decades of overview destroyed after freezer fails at Swedish university – Guardian

Analysis samples calm over decades at a Swedish medical university had been destroyed when a freezer malfunctioned all the contrivance thru the Christmas holidays, the institute has mentioned.

The samples had been kept in tanks cooled with liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -190C, at Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm.

KI is home to the Nobel Meeting, which is tasked with selecting a winner for the Nobel prize in physiology or treatment.

In some unspecified time in the future between 22 and 23 December there changed into an interruption within the provision of liquid nitrogen to 16 cryogenic tanks, and while the tanks can bound for four days with out additional liquid nitrogen, they had been left with out it for five, main to the destruction of samples from a few institutions.

Matti Sällberg, dean of KI’s southern campus, mentioned on Monday: “It came about at presumably absolutely the worst time imaginable in Sweden, fully 1 day sooner than Christmas Eve.”

The incident has been reported to police, the university added.

Some media stores reported that the estimated worth of the samples misplaced changed into about 500m kronor (£37m).

Sällberg mentioned no first fee estimate of the worth of the samples misplaced had been made, but mentioned it changed into with out problems within the millions.

“These worst affected are those researching leukaemia, they’ve gathered samples from sufferers over as fundamental as 30 years,” he added.

An within investigation has been launched at the university and in spite of there being no indication of sabotage, the incident has also been reported to police.

Sällberg mentioned: “For the time being there just isn’t any longer any such thing as a indication that it changed into because of outside have an effect on but the police document changed into carried out to veil all bases.”

The samples had been all strictly for overview so it would no longer comprise an tag on the care of any recent sufferers, but had been intended to be utilized in future overview.

“These are samples which had been the topic of intensive overview and there were plans for extra overview,” mentioned Sällberg.