Accepted answer
room temperature is above the refrigerated band, and how far above is the whole answer. Room temperature is not a number, so take the pharmacopoeial 20–25 °C and its 22.5 °C midpoint: 17.5 kelvin above the 5 °C middle of a 2–8 °C refrigerator. The ten-degree rule of thumb — degradation rate roughly doubling per 10 K — puts that at about 3.4 times the refrigerated rate. It is an order-of-magnitude statement about a rate, not a shelf life, and the top of the 20–25 °C band runs about 1.4 times faster than the bottom of it. Lyophilised material tolerates this far better than solution does, which is why it is shipped that way, but "tolerates" is a statement about weeks and the vial is being asked about months. Log the excursion rather than guess at it. Nothing here is medical advice, and research-use-only material is not approved for human use.
This is the tag where the advice is cheapest to follow and most often ignored.
Reconstituted with a preservative-containing diluent: refrigerated, conventionally treated as usable for about 28 days from first entry. Without a preservative, single use and discard.
Store with the desiccant sachet if one was supplied, inside the secondary container rather than loose in a drawer. Residual moisture is the dominant variable in solid-state stability.
Residual moisture is the dominant determinant of solid-state stability, which is why desiccants accompany lyophilised material.
Keep the desiccant with the vial and the certificate with the lot code.
edited 25 Jan 2025 by forty_two_c — tightened the wording; no substantive change
7Same experience here, different supplier. – dead_volume 5 months ago add a comment