Developmental activities for freeze-dried products are dictated by the limited availability and high cost of newly developed active compounds, and by Quality-by-Design requirements. Laboratory-scale freeze dryers used for formulation and process development show an excessive variety of designs and instrumentation concepts, making scale-up activities a challenge. The development of miniaturised equipment may provide enormous benefits in terms of development times and costs.

A team at the University of Alberta used the Linkam Freeze Drying system, FDCS, to study how intracellular ice formation during cryopreservation of cells is affected by the degree of supercooling and the cell volume, in the absence of cryoprotectants.

Studying the effect of supercooling and cell volume on intracellular ice formation (IIF), using Linkam’s Freeze Drying system the FDCS196.

Researchers at the University of Ottowa, Canada used Linkam’s Freeze Drying system, the FDCS196 to cryopreserve red blood cells with slow cooling rates prior to storage at -80°C.