title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Laboratory, Center for Bioengineering, Department of Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaohui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Paolo N
authors.initials: PN
authors.lastname: Catalano
authors.forename: Umut Atakan
authors.initials: UA
authors.lastname: Gurkan
authors.forename: Imran
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Khimji
authors.forename: Utkan
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Demirci
mesh_terms: D015925:Cryopreservation / Q000379:methods*; D003451:Cryoprotective Agents; D058989:Vitrification
chemical_list: D003451:Cryoprotective Agents