You'd think the immunologists would have sorted out optimal
  storage conditions years ago. I have talked to a few local
  ones, and they  work by "common sense" and hearsay:
  avoid repeated freezing/thawing; use -80; -20 is OK;
  +4 and throw out in 6 months; etc. No consistency at all.
  A general suspicion exists of suppliers' expiration dates,
  which might be contrived to make us buy more often.

  Has anyone seen a published comparative study, in a
  regular peer-reviewed journal, of the effects of
  different storage conditions on different kinds
  of antibodies?
                   John Kiernan, London, Canada.

On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 rschoonh@sph.unc.edu wrote:

> I have been using antibodies that were made for us ~12 years ago which were
> aliquated and stored in one of our -80 freezes and they still work
> perfectly.  Don't know about storing them at -196, I would doubt that it
> would hurt them but I don't think that it would extend their usfullness.
>
> I do know that when these same antibodies were stored at -20 (some were put
> in the -20 by a predecessor) they started to lose potency after about 3
> years.  That was when I 'discovered' the ones stored in the -80.