Sir Ranulph Fiennes attends launch event at the Source BioScience facility in Rochdale

Source BioScience, the international Laboratory Services and Products business, has launched a revolutionary -70°C walk-in chamber, the Polar50™. The launch event was held at the Company’s flagship facility in Rochdale, UK and included a captivating presentation by the world’s greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who has led numerous expeditions to the coldest places on Earth.

During the event, local dignitaries, industry professionals and members of the press were given a tour of the Company’s stability storage facilities, as well as its new analytical chemistry laboratory. There was also the opportunity to learn about the Polar50™ from Keith Parkes, Manufacturing Director at Source BioScience, who described the challenges overcome to produce the world’s first -70°C walk-in chamber.  

Richard Farnell, Leader of Rochdale Council, who attended the event, commented:

“We are delighted that the world’s first -70^oC storage chamber is to be cited in Rochdale on Kingsway Business Park. It gives me great pride knowing that Rochdale has that competitive edge in our offer of quality business parks and that we can continue to attract companies from within the biomedical and research sector.”

Source BioScience CEO, Dr Nick Ash, said:

“The launch of the flagship Polar50™ is an extremely significant event for us.  Engineering equipment which will operate within and maintain a large storage void at -70°C has been a challenging process, requiring close co-ordination between the groups involved in bringing it to fruition. Various operational elements have been built to maintain the low temperature conditions, interface with the key components and fit within our storage facility.

Whilst the project has been extremely challenging, as a team we have delivered a unique engineering solution which will meet the needs of our customers looking to store products at ultra-low temperatures.”

The 50m³ chamber offers customers from industry and academia a unique opportunity to store biological, pharmaceutical and medical products at ultra-low temperatures. This can include storage of cell lines/extracts, DNA/RNA, blood, and tissue, among many others. The chamber provides -70°C storage capabilities with a +/-1% tolerance. This is maintained by a purpose designed, dual refrigeration system, which provides 100% operating redundancy to ensure 24/7 compliance for a consistent and controlled environment. 

As well as being available for outsourced storage, the Polar50™ has been designed to allow easy installation into any existing stability suite, eliminating the need for multiple upright freezers, and offering significant savings in power usage, floor space and costs. 

The Polar50™ is the latest addition to the Company’s expanding portfolio of Laboratory Services and Products. As well as biostorage, Source BioScience offers Clinical Trial Support, Stability Storage and Analytical Testing Services, providing an end-to-end outsourced Laboratory Services solution for the product’s lifetime. In addition, the Company offers a range of Genomic Services, which not only include its 10-hour service for DNA sequencing but also Next-Generation Sequencing, including exome sequencing and RNA-Seq.

more about biosciences