Real-Time Temperature Mapping in Ultra-Low Freezers as a Standard Quality Assessment.

Real-Time Temperature Mapping in Ultra-Low Freezers as a Standard Quality Assessment. Biopreserv Biobank. 2019 Mar 26;: Authors: Powell S, Molinolo A, Masmila E, Kaushal S Abstract Adequate preservation of biospecimens has been proven to be critical to obtain reliable and reproducible results in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and many other assays. Most biological assays can be performed on specimens preserved in -80°C ultra-low freezers, but their quality can be influenced by temperature variability within storage units. Thus, regulatory standards such as those from the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, and standards from the Food and Drug Administration require temperature mapping, a standard quality assessment for accreditation when using ultra-low freezers for long-term biospecimen storage. The current mapping methods, providing annual/periodic data, may not be adequate indicators of temperature stability within the different zones of the freezers. In addition, they frequently require manual handling of biospecimens periodically, as they require freezers to be emptied or rearranged temporarily for the installation of temperature probes, risking the integrity of biospecimen quality. In this article, we describe a novel monitoring methodology based on real-time temperature reading of multiple zones by permanently installing thermocouples. An online cloud-based a...
Source: Biopreservation and Biobanking - Category: Biomedical Science Tags: Biopreserv Biobank Source Type: research