In the age of cutting-edge science, laboratories that facilitate innovative development and discovery must have the capability to be mobile.  Yet for years, the relocation of laboratories had posed a serious threat due to 15 to 20 percent of lab reagents being lost because necessary temperatures could not be maintained. Offering a solution, VIP Transport, a Mayflower Transit agent based in Corona, Calif., designed the Lab Transporter Vehicle, which is equipped with generators so that freezers, ultralows and refrigerators can be plugged in and powered up in transit, allowing labs to remain operational for scientists during transportation and eliminating down time. Following strict safety guidelines and regulations, all drivers and operating staff that handle the lab moves are HAZMAT certified from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Hazardous Materials Safety.First used in 1990 to move a lab at the University of California, the Lab Transporter Vehicle has helped move more than 100 labs for top universities and private institutions around the country, including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Florida. Dr. Deepak Srivastava recently used VIP Transport’s Lab Transporter Vehicles to move his DNA library from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease at the University of California in San Francisco. Srivastava’s impressive research laboratory focuses on heart disease in newborn children and adults.On July 1, another scientist took advantage of this modern mode of laboratory transportation – Dr. Alain Stintzi, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Stintzi moved his laboratory of infectious diseases to the medical school at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

“I have a large collection of infectious disease agents that have been genetically modified and constructed over the last seven years,” said Stintzi. “This lab, like many others, represents years and years of work. It is vital to the quest of scientific discovery that technology is available to relocate a lab without disruption.”

For the move, VIP Transport packed two large freezers, each twice the size of a household refrigerator, with Stintzi’s collection, which consists of more than 15,000 individual clones of bacteria, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter, which causes diarrhea.  The freezers as well as lab and research equipment were loaded into a special Lab Transporter Vehicle, equipped with generators that the freezers plug into to maintain a required temperature of minus 80 degrees Celsius within a climatically controlled van interior during transit.

“It’s great to be able to assist scientists and biologists, some of whom have dedicated years toward their study, in transporting their labs and sensitive materials,” said Dan Griffiths for VIP Transport. “When most people think of Mayflower Transit, they conjure images of a trusted, high-quality mover of who may have relocated their family but in reality, Mayflower agents are also helping to facilitate the advancement of science by providing highly-technological services around the country.”