Inductive heating of Magnetic Nanoparticles enables safe thawing of cryopreserved transplant organs

A new study reveals that nanotechnology can be used to rapidly rewarm cryogenically treated samples without damaging delicate frozen tissues, which may someday help make organ cryopreservation a reality. More than 60% of the hearts and lungs donated for transplantation must be discarded annually, because these tissues cannot be kept on ice for longer than four hours. According to recent estimates, if only half of unused organs were successfully transplanted, transplant waiting lists could be eliminated within two years. Long-term preservation methods like vitrification - which involves super-cooling biological samples to a glassy state - could establish tissue storage banks and reduce transplant rejection rates, greatly facilitating the process to find matching donors when needed.

* we have been able to vitrify organs since the 1980s but have not been able to safely thaw them
* we need to evenly and rapidly heat cryopreserved organs
* microwaving leaves hotspots that damage thawed organs
* magnetic nanoparticles enable the necessary rapid heating (100 degrees per minute) but without hotspots

Unlike convective warming, the new nanowarming method prevents tissue damage by evenly reheating cryogenically preserved tissues. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the March 1 2017 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by N. Manuchehrabadi at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN, and colleagues was titled, "Improved tissue cryopreservation using inductive heating of magnetic nanoparticles." CREDIT Manuchehrabadi et al., Science Translational Medicine (2017)

Science Translational Medicine - Improved tissue cryopreservation using inductive heating of magnetic nanoparticles

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