IVF Knowledge

Some pieces of lab equipment come and go. The 50 litre liquid nitrogen dewar is not one of them. It has been a fixture in IVF labs, andrology units, and veterinary reproduction facilities for long enough that most practitioners do not question its presence, they just order another one when the old one starts underperforming. That longevity is not accidental. The 50 litre configuration solves a genuine problem in a way that neither smaller nor much larger vessels do quite as well. The problem it solves Clinical cryogenic storage needs to be accessible, safe, and manageable without specialist infrastructure. A 20 litre dewar gets accessed constantly and refilled frequently. A 200 litre vessel requires more planning, more space, and more liquid nitrogen budget than a mid-sized clinic can justify. The 50 litre vessel sits in a range where the refill interval is measured in weeks rather than days, the vessel can be moved by two members of staff, and the sample capacity covers a meanin...

  Laboratory consumables may appear simple, but they are one of the most important parts of any scientific or medical environment. Every day, laboratories rely on consumables to maintain safe, sterile and accurate working conditions. In IVF clinics, consumables support embryo handling, fertility procedures and cryogenic preservation. In healthcare laboratories, consumables are used for diagnostics, pathology and patient testing. As demand for healthcare and fertility treatment grows across the UK, laboratories increasingly need reliable suppliers capable of providing specialist products for regulated laboratory environments. Cryolab supports laboratories across the UK and Ireland with laboratory consumables, IVF products and cryogenic storage solutions designed for professional use. https://cryolab.co.uk

When a specification committee at a fertility clinic sits down to select a cryogenic storage vessel, the deliberation rarely lasts long. Almost invariably, the 20L liquid nitrogen dewar ends up in the order. Not because it is the cheapest. Because it is exactly right for what the overwhelming majority of these facilities actually need. The 20L size evolved through decades of use in reproductive medicine as the capacity that balances sample volume, nitrogen management burden, physical footprint, and cost of replacement. A clinic processing 15 to 25 patient cases per week generates roughly 75 to 150 straws of stored material per week. A 20L dewar with a standard canister configuration accommodates 300 to 450 straws before the facility needs to rotate to a second vessel. For veterinary practices, the 20L dewar is even more dominant. Equine and bovine semen storage, canine semen banking, and feline oocyte research all happen in 20L vessels because the sample volumes are smaller than hu...

  Most laboratory managers know they need a dewar. Fewer know exactly which type to specify, and the difference matters more than most people realise. Get it wrong and you are either transporting samples in a vessel that was never designed for transit or storing long term material in something built for a day trip. Two Vessels, Two Very Different Jobs A dry shipper dewar looks similar to a storage dewar from the outside. Inside, they are completely different. A dry shipper holds nitrogen in an absorbent lining. There is no free liquid. This makes it safe to tip, safe to fly, and approved under IATA regulations for air transport of biological material. It is the right vessel for any laboratory sending samples between sites. A storage dewar holds free liquid nitrogen. It sits on your laboratory floor, it does not move, and it maintains your samples at minus 196 degrees Celsius for months at a time. It is the right vessel for any laboratory that needs long term liquid nitrogen d...

Choosing the right liquid nitrogen storage dewar is one of the most important decisions for any cryogenic laboratory or fertility clinic. A storage dewar is a vacuum-insulated vessel that holds liquid nitrogen and keeps your biological samples at ultra-low temperatures. They range from compact 10 litre units right up to large 50 litre vessels, depending on your storage needs. For IVF clinics, the priority is usually canister capacity and ease of inventory management. For research labs and B2B applications, low evaporation rate and long holding time tend to matter most. Cryolab supply LN2 storage dewars across the UK for both laboratory and clinical use. View their range here: https://cryolab.co.uk/product/cryo-storage-ln2-vessel/ If you are replacing an old vessel or setting up a new storage facility, it is worth speaking to a specialist before you buy.

If you work in an IVF laboratory, you already know that precision is everything. You also know that the terminology used to describe laboratory instruments is not always the precision instrument it should be. Stripping Pipette and Denuding Pipette — Meet Your Identical Twin Before an oocyte can undergo ICSI, it needs to be freed from the cloud of cumulus cells surrounding it. This pipette is called a stripping pipette in some labs, a denuding pipette in others. The terms are interchangeable. The instrument is identical. Three Biopsy Pipettes That Are Definitely Not Identical Polar body biopsy pipette: used to sample the polar body for oocyte genetic assessment. Fine bore, ~20–30 µm. Blastomere biopsy pipette: used on day 3 cleavage-stage embryos for PGT. ~30–40 µm. Trophectoderm biopsy pipette: used on day 5/6 blastocysts, the current gold standard for PGT in the UK. ~25–35 µm. Specialist Tools Worth Knowing The TESE pipette handles testicular sperm extraction. The zona dissectio...