The breakdown of a special refrigerator at the famous Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has serious consequences. Research conducted several decades ago has been irretrievably lost. Damage is estimated at 44 million euros.
Over the Christmas holidays last year, things got worse at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The Swedish Medical University is famous for awarding the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Then the process of installing refrigeration at the university was disrupted. Research samples were stored in tanks cooled with liquid nitrogen at -190°C. But sometime between December 22 and 23, there was an interruption in the supply of liquid nitrogen to sixteen cryogenic tanks. They could do without it for four days, but unfortunately they ended up with five. Samples from different institutions cannot be saved.
“It probably happened at the worst possible time in Sweden, the day before Christmas Eve,” said Matti Sahlberg, dean of Karolinska Institutet’s South Campus. He did not provide an official damage estimate, but said it could easily reach into the millions. Some sources even talk about 500 million Swedish krona or 44 million euros. “The samples from the leukemia study are the most affected, which is a collection of samples from patients over thirty years ago,” Sahlberg said. Missing samples were used for future research. Therefore, the minor disaster has no impact on the treatment of existing patients.
The university reported the incident to the police, who began investigating the matter. The internal investigation did not reveal any sabotage.
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