Accepted answer
Answer first: dry, cold, dark and still, with the lot code where you can still read it in a year.
Lyophilised powder: refrigerated at two to eight degrees for months, frozen at minus twenty for longer. The gain from minus eighty over minus twenty is small for a dry solid and is not usually worth the arrangement.
Degradation pathway by condition
| Pathway | Dominant when | Detected by |
|---|
| Deamidation | Solution, neutral to alkaline pH | RP-HPLC, +1 Da on MS |
| Oxidation | Light, trace metals, peroxides | RP-HPLC, +16 Da on MS |
| Hydrolysis | Solution, extremes of pH | RP-HPLC, fragment masses |
| Aggregation | Agitation, interfaces, high concentration | SEC, visual haze; often invisible on RP-HPLC |
| Freeze-concentration damage | Freeze-thaw of buffered solution | SEC, loss of recovered content |
Position matters less than people think: upright or on its side makes no difference to a lyophilised powder, and upright is marginally better for a reconstituted vial because it keeps the stopper dry.
Two-to-eight-degree refrigeration and minus-twenty freezing are the standard storage conditions for lyophilised peptides in supplier documentation across the market.
The caveat is that storage conditions preserve what you have and cannot improve it.
Minus eighty buys very little over minus twenty for a dry solid.