Pennington Biomedical Research protects instrumentation and equipment at its Genomics Core Facility, valued at $1.7m, ensuring reliability of results and protection of irreplaceable patient samples
It's hard to open a newspaper or watch the news today without hearing about the obesity epidemic or the prominence of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, and cancer within society.
Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC), Louisiana State University, which opened almost 20 years ago and is now the largest academically based nutrition research center in the world, has formulated a research programme centered on cutting-edge science and the role that nutrition plays in each of these chronic conditions.
Franek Technologies has joined PBRC in its efforts to conquer these serious public health issues by providing instrumentation-specific power protection for all 12 of the Genomics Core Facility's (GCF) critical instruments and peripheral equipment, valued at $1.7million.
With this level of power protection in place, the GCF is no longer vulnerable to frequent power outages caused by thunderstorms that would otherwise have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in instrumentation damage, loss of irreplaceable patient samples, and significant lost productive time.
Since the installation of the Franek Technologies LPS units, the GCF has suffered no power related losses.
The GCF serves over 300 researchers annually who represent all divisions of PBRC Basic Sciences, as well as researchers from Louisiana State University (LSU) main campus, LSU school of veterinary medicine, Southeastern Louisiana University, Southern University, LSU Medical Center, and Tulane University.
This core facility provides DNA sequencing, DNA fragment analysis, qualitative and quantitative analysis of DNA and RNA samples, quantitative PCR, microarray spotting, hybridisation, and scanning, robotics, and bioinformatics services, along with individual and small group training and consultation services for sequence analysis, real-time PCR, and microarray analysis.
As a core facility, the GCF is entrusted with the valuable samples from other laboratories.
GCF laboratory management takes this responsibility very seriously and realised that to be successful, the facility needed to implement a secondary level of protection for these irreplaceable samples against unconditioned power and weather-related outages.
Based on a referral from Applied Biosystems, GCF turned to Franek Technologies to provide supplemental power protection.
Prior to the referral to Franek Technologies, the GCF purchased another manufacturer's power protection unit and sustained instrumentation damage caused by uncorrected power resulting in over $5K in damage.
Since the implementation of Franek Technologies' customised solution, all instrumentation at the GCF has run smoothly 24/7 and has experienced no losses as a result of power irregularities.
"It is imperative that we protect not only our significant investment in instrumentation but also the irreplaceable patient samples that we receive," explains Susan Newman, laboratory manager, Genomics Core Facility, Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
"Franek Technologies has helped us immensely in this area.
"Our investment in Franek Technologies systems has also assisted us with our overall budgetary planning.
"Because we know that our instruments will run smoothly 24/7, our facility's performance is now so consistent that we are able to easily predict our budgets, knowing that we will not have any major unexpected repairs due to substandard power.
"This is a wonderful benefit when our bottom-line is so important for future funding and research."
