Nanowarming: A new concept in tissue and organ preservation
Published in Nanowarming.
John Bischof (Director of Bioheat and Mass Transfer Lab at the University of Minnesota)
Progress in cryopreservation by vitrification has brought us closer to an era in regenerative medicine marked by a strong supply chain of donor and engineered tissues and organs for transplantation and use. But as of now, even perfectly vitrified large tissues and organs cannot survive thawing. This failure comes from warming these systems too slowly leading to crystallization (de-vitrification) and/or non-uniform warming leading to thermal stress and cracking. In this talk I will outline the results from a collaborative effort based at the University of Minnesota demonstrating proof of principle for a new “nanowarming” technique for thawing vitrified tissues and organs uniformly at potentially 100 s of °C/min to address this problem. Specifically, we entrain biocompatible magnetic nanoparticles next to or within vitrification solutions that are either boundary loaded, or perfusion loaded into tissues prior to cryopreservation. Then we use radiofrequency (RF) fields to excite these nanoparticles throughout the tissue, thereby causing a rapid and uniform warming. Characterization and modeling studies on the nanoparticle, RF field and warming results in solutions and tissues will be discussed. Future studies scaling up this technology are planned.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0011224015001571