A failure that occurred at the “worst possible time” affects, for example, leukemia research.
Problem in the freezer led to a scientific disaster at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Decades of collected samples were destroyed due to an error at a prestigious medical university.
The freezer failure happened just in time for the Christmas holidays. The university reported on the incident on Monday, according to news agency AFP.
The samples were stored at -190 degrees in tanks that are cooled with liquid nitrogen. Between December 22 and 23, the flow of liquid nitrogen to 16 cryogenic tanks was interrupted. The tanks normally work for four days without additional nitrogen, but because of the Christmas holidays, it took five days before the problem was noticed.
This led to the destruction of numerous samples.
“It happened at the worst possible time in Sweden, just a day before Christmas Eve,” said the dean of the Karolinska Institute's southern campus Matti Sällberg for AFP.
According to some media reports, the value of the destroyed samples was around 500 million kroner (44 million euros). According to Sällberg, no official estimate has been made, but the damage will be in the millions anyway.
At the university an internal investigation has been initiated. In addition, the incident has been reported to the police, although there are no indications of sabotage.
“At the moment, there are no indications that this was caused by outside activity, but a report was made to the police just in case.”
The samples destroyed due to the error were kept purely for research purposes, so what happened does not affect the treatment of current patients. However, the samples were intended to be used in future studies.
“These samples have been studied extensively, and more studies were planned,” Sällberg said.
“This affects leukemia researchers the worst, they have been collecting samples from patients for up to 30 years.”
Karolininen Institute is an internationally respected research university. The university annually awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
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