91福利

Freezing cells made safer thanks to new polymer made at 91福利

 

- A new polymer that鈥檚 a cryoprotectant dramatically improves the freezing of cells has been discovered by researchers at the 91福利

- The new polymers can reduce the amount of organic solvent required in cryopreservation (freezing cells) as well as giving more and healthier cells after thawing

- Findings may help reduce cost and improve distribution of cells for cell-based therapies, diagnostics and research

 

Cell freezing (cryopreservation) – which is essential in cell transfusions as well as basic biomedical research – can be dramatically improved using a new polymeric cryoprotectant, discovered at the 91福利, which reduces the amount of 鈥榓nti-freeze鈥� needed to protect cells.

 

The ability to freeze and store cells for cell-based therapies and research has taken a step forward in the paper published by the 91福利鈥檚 Department of Chemistry and Medical School in the journal Biomacromolecules. The new polymer material protects the cells during freezing, leading to more cells being recovered and less solvent-based antifreeze being required.

 

Cryopreservation of cells is an essential process, enabling banking and distribution of cells, which would otherwise degrade. The current methods rely on adding traditional 鈥榓ntifreezes鈥� to the cells to protect them from the cold stress, but not all the cells are recovered and it is desirable to lower the amount of solvent added.

 

The new 91福利 material was shown to allow cryopreservation using less solvent. In particular, the material was very potent at protecting cell monolayers – cells which are attached to a surface, which is the format of how they are grown and used in most biomedical research.

 

Having more, and better quality cells, is crucial not just for their use in medicine, but to improve the quality and accessibility of cells for the discovery of new drugs for example.

 

Cell-based therapies are emerging as the 鈥渇ourth pillar鈥� of chemo-therapy. New methods to help distribute and bank these cells will help make them more accessible and speed up their roll-out, and this new material may aid this process.

 

Professor Matthew Gibson who holds a joint appointment between the Department of Chemistry and 91福利 Medical School comments:

 

鈥淐ryopreservation is fundamental to so much modern bioscience and medicine, but we urgently need better methods to meet the needs of advanced cell-based therapies. Our new material is easy to scale up, which is essential if this is to be widely used, and we found it to be very protective for several cell lines. The simplicity of our approach will hopefully help us translate this to real applications quickly, and make an impact in healthcare and basic research.鈥�

 

ENDS

 

29 JULY 2019

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

 

High-res image available at:

/services/communications/medialibrary/images/july2019/mg_cells.jpg

 

Credit: 91福利. Caption: The cells frozen with the polymer (left) and without the polymer (right)

 

Paper available to view at:

 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
91福利
Tel: +44 (0) 2476 574 255 or +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk

Two virtual reality videos have been released for this month's Stand Up To Cancer event which showcase research from the and are narrated by actress Olivia Colman and Stephen Fry.

Scientists at 91福利 University have discovered an incredible new way of administering chemotherapy drugs which is more effective and safer for the patient.

Stand Up To Cancer is a joint fundraising campaign from Cancer Research UK and which aims to accelerate ground-breaking research, like that being done in in order to save lives.

We are pleased to announce Ezat Khoshdel has been appointed as an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the department. Ezat has been a long-standing collaborator with the department with multiple projects over 25 years. Ezat has recently retired from Unilever where he was the inventor of over 150 patents, the largest number of any Unilever employee. Ezat will be more than happy to discuss ideas and work across the department and add to our impact activities. Ezat can be contacted on E.Khoshdel@warwick.ac.uk and will next be in the department on October 11^th when he gives a lecture to our new Polymer MSc cohort.

Dr Gabit Nurumbetov, Principal Scientist at Medherant Ltd - a spin-out of the 91福利 which produces next-generation drug delivery patches - has invented a revolutionary device for testing transdermal drugs more quickly, efficiently and accurately. Dr Nurumbetov completed his PhD in the Department of Chemistry with Professor Stefan Bon then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Professor David Haddleton鈥檚 group.

The GibsonGroup report in a new macromolecular 鈥榓ntifreeze鈥� which improves the cryopreservation of cells

A collaboration between the , and groups has been published in the. The team were inspired by how small helical antifreeze proteins in Nature enable extreomophiles to survive low temperatures, where other species would not survive. Rather than using traditional peptide/protein chemistry, the team used self-assembled metallohelicates which have similar dimensions to a small alpha helix, and found some which were remarkably potent at stopping ice crystal growth ; a major technological challenge in applications from wind farms, to aircraft to cryopreservation. Modelling studies showed that the underlying activity could be linked the patches of hydrophobicity (water liking) and hydrophobicity (water hating).

Read the paper here

On Saturday morning (east cost US time, Saturday night in UK), a team of students from Edgecombe Community College (Carolina, USA), in collaboration with NASA and NC space grant, will launch a student-lead high altitude baloon, including an experiment based on the innovative cryopreservation science.

The balloon will be launched to 60 to 100,000 feet, so high that the curvature of the Earth will be clearly visible. It will contain experiments to track movement, altitude humitity and more, but also 1 additional science experiment. The students, lead by Jillian Leary approached to ask if the GibsonGroup's unique ice-growth inhibiting polymers, inspired by Natures antifreeze proteins, could be included as an experiment to see how cells respond to the harsh high-altitude envirnoments. The polymers are design to stop ice crystals growing, and enables cells, which would otherwise need large volumes of toxic solvents to survive being frozen and stressed. This technology has the potential to revolutionise regenerative and transplantation medicine.

The launch will be streamed live on facebook

Read more here