Emerging Technologies in Medical Applications of Minimum Volume Vitrification

Abstract

Cell/tissue biopreservation has broad public health and socio-economic impact affecting millions of lives. Cryopreservation technologies provide an efficient way to preserve cells and tissues targeting the clinic for applications including reproductive medicine and organ transplantation. Among these technologies, vitrification has displayed significant improvement in post-thaw cell viability and function by eliminating harmful effects of ice crystal formation compared to the traditional slow freezing methods. However, high cryoprotectant agent concentrations are required, which induces toxicity and osmotic stress to cells and tissues. It has been shown that vitrification using small sample volumes (i.e., <1 µl) significantly increases cooling rates and hence reduces the required cryoprotectant agent levels. Recently, emerging nano- and micro-scale technologies have shown potential to manipulate picoliter to nanoliter sample sizes. Therefore, the synergistic integration of nanoscale technologies with cryogenics has the potential to improve biopreservation methods.

Keywords::

• cryopreservation
• cryoprotectant agents
• droplet vitrification
• minimum volume vitrification

Financial & competing interests disclosure

P Catalano would like to thank the Fulbright Scholar Program for partially supporting his postdoctoral fellowship in Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Laboratory, Center for Bioengineering, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women‘s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. This work was supported by NIH R21 HL095960. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

P Catalano would like to thank the Fulbright Scholar Program for partially supporting his postdoctoral fellowship in Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Laboratory, Center for Bioengineering, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women‘s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. This work was supported by NIH R21 HL095960. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.