Since our foundation by Dr. Vincent von Walcke-Wulffen on 8th of June 2010, BioKryo grew tremendously. It started as a spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering at its site in Sulzbach-Neuweiler (in the south-west of Germany) near the French-Luxemburg-German border. BioKryo changed offices within the IBMT-building to fit the growing team as well as the need of space for the storage activities. Since the beginning of 2019, BioKryo is a part of the Air Liquide Group. As BioKryo will reach its limits of storage area within the next year, it was decided to move into a bigger hall just around the corner from the original location in Q4/2020 or Q1/2021.
Starting with back-up cryostorage for biotech companies, BioKryo commercially used the FCT (Fraunhofer-Cryostorage-Technology) to securely transfer biological samples in a cold environment. Over the past years, also transplants like stem cells, parathyroid glands or ovarian tissue have been stored at BioKryo. Over 100 of these transplants have already been send back for replantation to improve or even save life of patients.
Within these past 10 years, overall, more than half a million samples came to BioKryo, e.g. for back-up, outsourcing, or second site storage. These samples include - additionally to the human transplants - bacterial, yeast, and eukaryotic cell lines, reserve samples, vaccines, clinical trial samples, and many more. Hosting services for freezers or cryovessels have been added to our service as well as disaster prevention possibilities.
BioKryo accomplished the ISO 9001:2015 certification since 2013 and the accreditation of AABB (American Association of Blood Banks) since 2016 for the storage of cord blood, until now both have twice been successfully renewed after three or two years, respectively. BioKryo owns the authorization for storage of cryopreserved samples according to § 20c and § 52a of the German Drug Law to proof the GMP-compliant service and also the approval of the Ministry of Environment of the Saarland for the storage of GMOs up to S2 as well as the approval of the Ministry for Health of the Saarland for the storage of infectious samples up to BSL2. From the beginning of BioKryo, a stringent qualification of equipment was implemented, to serve with highly functional devices, completed by a constant training of the staff to ensure maximal safety and security for employees. This safety and security is the biggest point for the samples that BioKryo cares for, therefore, our alarm and control systems are tested regularly to guaranty permanent feedback for the 24/7/365-surveillance.
As BioKryo now is a part of the AirLiquide Biobanking Network, BioKryo works closely together with their partner cryobanks to enlarge their portfolio.
As of today, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary from a distance because of the Covid-19 situation, but we are definitely looking forward to facing even more successful years in cryostorage.
