Are you a VC doing cryo start-up due dilligence? A researcher trying to keep up? Did you sign up for cryopreservation and you're estimating your revival science-based prognosis? This post is for you
The most important contribution of this paper is demonstrated rapid warming on a human organ scale. The cooling part, vitrifying multi-liter volumes of M22, is actually easy because M22 was originally designed and demonstrated for that purpose more than 20 years ago. By coincidence, I first showed that two liter volumes of M22 could be vitrified without ice formation or cracking at the University of Minnesota in 2005 during the Society for Cryobiology meeting there. ( “Toward large organ vitrification: extremely low critical cooling and warming rates of M22 vitrification solution,” Cryobiology 51, 362 (2005)). One of the slides from that talk, a photo of a vitrified 2 liter volume of M22, has been on the web for 20 years.
Although not in refereed scientific literature, Alcor was the first to demonstrate a decade ago by CT scanning that large organs (a human brain) could be vitrified without ice formation using M22. The U of M work is certainly great and a major milestone, but the cooling problem hasn't really been a problem with M22 provided that adequate concentrations reach all parts of organs. That was what the solution was designed for.
Thank you so much for your insight, Brian! Yeah, I agree that cooling is not that much of a deal breaker anymore (wow, your work really did preceed it all!). But that paper clearly states "towards human organs" which is a huge deal for conservative academic environment;) And the nanowarming is the key tech right now, would you agree?
The most important contribution of this paper is demonstrated rapid warming on a human organ scale. The cooling part, vitrifying multi-liter volumes of M22, is actually easy because M22 was originally designed and demonstrated for that purpose more than 20 years ago. By coincidence, I first showed that two liter volumes of M22 could be vitrified without ice formation or cracking at the University of Minnesota in 2005 during the Society for Cryobiology meeting there. ( “Toward large organ vitrification: extremely low critical cooling and warming rates of M22 vitrification solution,” Cryobiology 51, 362 (2005)). One of the slides from that talk, a photo of a vitrified 2 liter volume of M22, has been on the web for 20 years.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051220043911/http://www.alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm
Although not in refereed scientific literature, Alcor was the first to demonstrate a decade ago by CT scanning that large organs (a human brain) could be vitrified without ice formation using M22. The U of M work is certainly great and a major milestone, but the cooling problem hasn't really been a problem with M22 provided that adequate concentrations reach all parts of organs. That was what the solution was designed for.
Thank you so much for your insight, Brian! Yeah, I agree that cooling is not that much of a deal breaker anymore (wow, your work really did preceed it all!). But that paper clearly states "towards human organs" which is a huge deal for conservative academic environment;) And the nanowarming is the key tech right now, would you agree?