The Karolinska Institutet, one of the most important medical universities in the world based in Stockholm, Sweden, announced this week that a malfunction in some of its freezers during the Christmas holidays destroyed many samples collected over decades of research. The Karolinska Institutet – which is also the body that awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine every year – is one of the most important research centers in the world for biomedical disciplines.
The reason for the malfunction is not yet entirely clear. The samples were stored in tanks cooled with liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -190°C, when an interruption occurred in the supply of liquid nitrogen to 16 tanks between 22 and 23 December. These containers can last for four days without additional liquid nitrogen, but due to the Christmas holidays they were out of stock for five. The rise in temperature inside them caused the destruction of the samples.
The destroyed samples came from several research institutions, which often send their material to institutions with more sophisticated machinery to conduct certain tests, and were mainly those used for leukemia research. The collection of some groups of samples had lasted for 30 years, with the aim also of studying the evolution of the disease and the human body’s response to treatments.
Some Swedish newspapers wrote that the estimated value of the destroyed samples was around 500 million crowns (around 44 million euros). The police, who are investigating the incident, said the loss is certainly in the millions, but an official estimate has not yet been made.
Matti Sällberg, who was head of the medical laboratory at Karolinska Institutet for eleven years and is still a professor at the university, he said al Guardian that the report to the police was made in order to take any hypothesis into consideration, but that “at the moment there are no indications that the accident was due to external intervention”. However, we are trying to understand how it was possible that no one noticed the malfunction for so many days. Sällberg added that the destroyed samples were all related to the research department and that therefore their loss will not affect the care of patients who are currently hospitalized in the hospital linked to the institute. However, the loss in terms of study material is enormous.