We strive to ensure our products arrive in your hands in perfect condition, as soon as possible. Find out about shipping costs and times in your region, storing your products, and more.

To find shipping and pricing details for your country:

• Go to the top-right corner of any page on our website
• Select your country from the drop-down menu
• Go to a product's datasheet and you'll find region-specific shipping information. Your selection will be saved for the next time you visit our site.

What does shipping directly from Abcam look like?

If we ship directly to your country, you'll be able to order online from the product's datasheet by following the online checkout process.

Delivery times, prices and stock availability will be displayed on the datasheet. Note that the delivery time might change if you order several units of a product—this will be shown when you select the number of units on the checkout screen.

• For orders to the UK and US, we provide next-day delivery.
• For other regions, delivery will take 3 – 5 business days.

What does shipping from Abcam via an authorized distributor look like?

We use distributing partners to help us ship to some regions. If your country is covered by distributors, then you will prompted to contact your distributor from the product's datasheet.

When contacting the distributor, include the abID and quantity of product you need. The distributor will then be in touch.

Why does Abcam use distributors?

Using a distributor allows us to provide reliable service to countries around the world. It also ​allows us to provide support in your local language.

Based on tests conducted in our lab, we select the most appropriate shipping condition to ensure the stability of the product during transit.

We use four shipping conditions:

• Dry ice
• Blue ice
• Dual temperature
• Ambient temperature

When do Abcam shipments contain dry ice?

​​For our most temperature-sensitive products, which need to be kept frozen during transit, products shipped on dry ice will arrive in a polystyrene box filled with dry ice pellets. Products requiring dry ice are only shipped Monday to Wednesday. This means that the dry ice will never be left over the weekend and without time to sublimate.

Why does my Abcam shipment contain blue ice?

Applicable products will arrive with blue ice packs to keep them cool (approximately 4ºC). On some occasions, the ice pack may have thawed by the time the product reaches you; this is usually perfectly fine, and will not affect product quality.

What if components in my package have different temperature requirements?

Some kits contain certain components which need to be stored on dry ice. In these cases, we will ship in a dual temperature box, with the most temperature sensitive products placed in a separate dry ice compartment.

Why doesn't my package have any ice?

​​Some of our products are stable enough to be shipped at room temperature, so will not come with any dry ice or ice packs. We only ship products at room temperature if we have experimentally determined that this will not affect product quality during shipping.

For individual products, shipping costs will be displayed on the datasheet. For multiple products, calculated costs will be displayed on the 'order summary' screen of online checkout.

Where can I find the shipping costs associated with my order?

​​For individual products, shipping costs will be displayed on the datasheet. For multiple products, calculated costs will be displayed on your 'order summary' screen at checkout.

What factors determine the shipping cost?

The destination, necessary packaging to keep contents stable and number of products in the order all determine the final shipping cost.

What can I do to make sure my shipping estimate is accurate?

Make sure you select your region on the top-left corner of the website for appropriate shipping details to be shown. Different products have different shipping requirements to arrive stable. Note the product shipping cost itself as displayed on the 'order summary' screen at checkout.

What if my products have in different shipping requirements?

If ordering a single product, you'll pay the shipping charge for that product, which is shown on the datasheet. If ordering multiple products, you'll only be charged for the item with the highest shipping charge. See example table below.

As part of our commitment to reduce waste throughout our value chain, we explain how you can safely and sustainably dispose of our packaging.

Can Abcam's shipping boxes be recycled?

Our boxes are made of cardboard, almost always recyclable through your local authorities' recycling program. They can also be kept and reused for storage.

What do I do with the ice packs after I've received my order?

Our ice packs are made of recyclable high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which contains either a water or gel-based coolant. It’s worth checking your local guidelines, but these can often be recycled after draining the coolant.

Ice packs can also be reused many times over, so long as they’ve not come into contact with toxic materials.

Can expanded polystyrene be recycled?

Our products are shipped in expanded polystyrene (EPS) boxes to keep them cool.

It's worth checking your local guidelines, but EPS is not commonly recycled; it should usually be disposed of in domestic waste. At this time, we're unable to accept returns of unwanted EPS packaging.

We're looking into various solutions to replace EPS and plan to trial new shipping materials for certain box sizes this year.

Are Abcam's vial boxes recyclable?

We're excited to say 'yes!'

Although our customers previously had a lot of fun building with our old, 'brick' style acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) vial holders, that material is rarely recyclable.

We have since moved to our new paperboard vial boxes, which will eliminate over eight tons of plastic annually. We've worked hard to ensure our new vial boxes allow us to ship different sizes just as safely as ABS while being fully recyclable. Paperboard is accepted by most local authorities' recycling schemes. We hope you like our new boxes as much as we do, and we'd love to hear any feedback you have on them.

Proteins can be less stable outside their native environment. They can lose activity as a result of proteolysis, aggregation, and suboptimal storage. Optimal conditions for storage depend on the specific protein, and instructions can be found on the datasheet. We've outlined some general guidelines below.

​Should I lyophilize my protein, or keep it in solution?

​Lyophilization allows for more stable long-term storage; however, the protein must be reconstituted before use. Specific considerations must also be made when handling lyophilized peptides and proteins.

Protein storage in solution is more prone to microbial or proteolytic degradation.

​At what temperature should I store my protein?

​Storage of protein solutions at room temperature leads to protein degradation and/or inactivity, which is also commonly caused by microbial growth.

For short-term storage (a few weeks), keeping the protein at 4 ˚C is recommended. For longer-term storage, we recommend keeping the protein at -20 or -80 ˚C. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles should be avoided, which can also decrease protein stability.

What should I consider when reconstituting proteins?

Reconstitution concentration is important for protein stability. Solutions at concentrations lower than 1 mg/mL are more prone to proteolysis or inactivation because of low-level binding to the storage vessel. Because a higher concentration than 1 mg/mL may not be realistic in some cases, it is common practice to add “carrier”, such as purified bovine serum albumin (BSA), to 1 to 5 mg/mL (0.1% to 0.5%).

What other agents does Abcam offer to promote protein stability?

Various agents can be used to promote protein stability, such as cryoprotectants, protease inhibitors, phosphatase inhibitors, antimicrobial agents, reducing agents, chelating agents, and detergents.

These additives may help to enhance the shelf life of the proteins. However, the question of whether to add or not should be carefully considered depending on the experimental need. For example, high viscosity may compromise sample quality as well as downstream experimental results. While helping to prevent disulfide bond formation, reducing agents also inhibit other redox reactions which may be of interest.  Similarly, the inclusion of protease inhibitors for proteins to be used with cell cultures or in living systems would not be advisable.

How can cryoprotectants promote protein stability?

Adding 25-50% glycerol or ethylene glycol can help stabilize proteins by preventing the formation of ice crystals at -20 °C, which can destroy protein structure. This enables repeated use from a single stock.

How can protease inhibitors promote protein stability?

​​Protease inhibitors interact with the active site of proteases that hamper proteolytic activity detrimental to protein stock stability. Some examples are PMSF (0.1-1 mM), Pepstatin A (1 μg/mL), Leupeptin (1 μg/mL), etc.

How can phosphatase inhibitors promote protein stability?

​Phosphatase inhibitors inhibit several phosphatases to preserve the phosphorylation state of the proteins. If you don't add phosphatase inhibitors, this can result in reduced or no kinase activity or unexpected protein size.

Common phosphatases include acid phosphatases, alkaline phosphatases, serine/threonine phosphatases, protein tyrosine phosphatases.

Common inhibitors include sodium fluoride, sodium orthovanadate, sodium pyrophosphate decahydrate, β-glycerophosphate (the concentration of which must be determined experimentally).

How can anti-microbial agents promote protein stability?

Adding antimicrobial agents, for example, 1.02-0.05% (w/v) sodium azide (NaN3) or 0.01% (w/v) thimerosal, can help to prevent microbial growth.

How can reducing agents promote protein stability?

​Most proteins contain free thiol groups containing cysteines and oxidation of these free thiols leads to the formation of a disulfide bond between cysteines. The majority of the intracellular proteins require these free thiols for their biological function. Adding reducing 1-5mM dithiothreitol (DTT), and 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME, sometimes called ß-ME), can help to maintain proteins in a reduced state by preventing oxidation of cysteines.

Please note that the presence of reducing agents can interfere with certain reactions. So we recommend removing reducing agents if you intend to conjugate the protein. Since reducing agents prevent disulfide bond formation, this is particularly pertinent if you intend to label the protein via a thiol group. In addition, some protein structures are maintained by intramolecular disulfide bonds, which might be broken in a reducing environment.

How can chelating agents promote protein stability?

​Adding chelating agents, like 1-5mM EDTA, groups proteins together, and helps to maintain the reduced state.

How can detergents promote protein stability?

​​Adding detergents such as 0.01% Tween-80 help maintain the stability of the hydrophobic protein in aqueous solution. This also reduces the probability of proteins binding to the storage tube.

Find out how we ship our products and how to store them when they arrive.

For product-specific storage and handling instructions, you should follow the advice on the product’s datasheet immediately upon receipt.

For most products, the shipping and storage temperatures can normally be found on the datasheet. The products we sell at Abcam include various biomolecules and reagents which are inherently sensitive to temperature. We always take care to consider the optimal conditions for the delivery, storage and use of every product.

How are antibodies shipped and stored?

Antibodies are relatively stable proteins. We ship our antibodies with ice packs to provide a controlled temperature during transit and ensure that stability is not impaired.

We performed a study for a small set of antibodies that showed that storing them at temperatures of up to +45ºC for 1 week does not impair their activity. However, temperatures of +60°C reduces antibody activity. As we have only tested a small number of products we continue to ship on ice as we cannot run similar tests for all products in our catalogue. These results should provide assurance that product quality should not be affected if your package arrives at ambient temperature.

Once you have received the product, please follow the long-term storage instructions detailed on the product's datasheet.

For general tips, see our antibody storage guide.

How are protein and peptides shipped and stored?

Proteins and peptides that are sold in liquid form/solution are sensitive to high temperatures, so are shipped on ice packs or dry ice. Lyophilized proteins and peptides are more stable and are shipped on ice packs or at room temperature.

Upon receipt, care should be taken to store these products as directed on the datasheet as quickly as possible. Most proteins can be snap-frozen in liquid Nitrogen and stored at -20ºC.

Note: frost-free freezers should be avoided, as variations in temperature and moisture can damage the product.

How are ELISA kits and cellular and biochemical assays shipped and stored?

Individal components are shipped according to their stability. Most kits will be shipped in a box with ice packs, with any particularly temperature-sensitive reagents shipped in dry-ice compartments.

When you receive your kit:

• Refer to the datasheet and protocol booklet for advice on each individual component. Storage temperatures are listed under the 'Properties' tab of the datasheet.
• Take note of the recommended timeframes. Long and short-term storage instructions may differ

Assay kits can be stored for up to a year if stored as recommended, unless the datasheet or protocol says otherwise.

How are conjugation kits shipped and stored?

Conjugation kits are shipped at room temperature. We don't use ice packs because moisture from condensation could degrade the conjugate during shipping. Upon receipt, these kits should be stored at -20°C.

How are cell lines and lysates shipped and stored?

Cell lines and lysates are very temperature sensitive, and are shipped on dry ice. On receipt, cells should be stored in liquid Nitrogen for long-term stability.

How are biochemicals shipped and stored?

Biochemicals in our range of agonists, activators, antagonists, and inhibitors are shipped under different conditions depending on their tested short-term stability. These products comprise a range of different molecules with different properties, so make sure you follow the storage instructions on the datasheet.

As a general guide:

• Ensure vials are tightly sealed before storing
• Prepare any solutions the day you're using them, if possible. If you need to make up stock solutions in advance, store aliquots in tightly sealed vials at -20°C for up to 1 month