Cryopreservation is a core technology which underpins both research, development and production activities involving cell culture. It is an enabling technology which is often taken for granted these can have disasterous consequences should cell stocks not be frozen and stored correctly and in adequately controlled conditions. Over the 20 years of its existence ECACC has developed a wealth of experience both in cryopreservation techniques and long-term ultra low temperature storage.

Resources
ECACC’s commitment to such technology is clearly demonstrated by the opening of a new purpose built state of the art ultra low temperature facility located at the Health Protection Agency, Porton Down. This facility has the capacity to house 50 large liquid nitrogen fed storage vessels making it one of the largest storage centres of its type in Europe. Two 10,000L liquid nitrogen supply vessels, providing at least 100% reserve capacity, serve the facility which also benefits from the latest telemetry alarm and monitoring systems. The facility also benefits from having advanced safety systems involving oxygen sensors linked to powerful forced air ventilation systems. ECACC has also developed a computerised, bar-coded, voice recognition system for inventory control and stock taking purposes. In addition to storage ECACC has two programmable rate controlled freezers that enable ECACC to freeze cells in an optimised and reproducible manner.

In order to maintain and support the above facilities ECACC has a dedicated warehouse team of six people with responsibility for all aspects of inventory control, picking, maintenance and despatch of cell lines for all of ECACC’s activities.

Capability
ECACC currently has 750,000 x 1ml cyovials in storage and expects this to increase to over 1,000,000 within the next 3 years, mainly as a result of the number of lymphoblastoid cell lines being generated for human genetic research. The resources and expertise outlined above have enabled ECACC to provide off-site confidential safe storage for clients in addition to storage of internally produced banks and patent deposits. This service also includes a fully validated cGMP storage vessel for the storage of cGMP Master Cell Banks.