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Scientists Have Found a Way To Rapidly Thaw Cryopreserved Tissue Without Damage (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Researchers have developed a technique that allows them to rapidly thaw cryopreserved human and pig samples without damaging the tissue -- a development that could help get rid of organ transplant waiting lists. Cryopreservation is the ability to preserve tissues at liquid nitrogen temperatures for long periods of time and bring them back without damage, and it's something scientists have been dreaming about achieving with large tissue samples and organs for decades. Instead of using convection, the team used nanoparticles to heat tissues at the same rate all at once, which means ice crystals can't form, so they don't get damaged. To do this, the researchers mixed silica-coated iron oxide nanoparticles into a solution and generated uniform heat by applying an external magnetic field. They then warmed up several human and pig tissue samples ranging between 1 and 50 mL, using either their new nanowarming technique and traditional slow warming over ice. Each time, the tissues warmed up with nanoparticles displayed no signs of harm, unlike the control samples. Afterwards, they were able to successfully wash the nanoparticles away from the sample after thawing. The team also tested out the heating in an 80 mL system -- without tissue this time -- and showed that it achieved the same critical warming rates as in the smaller sample sizes, suggesting that the technique is scalable. You can view a video of tissue being thawed out in less than a minute here. The research has been published in Science Translational Medicine.
So the technique shown in the documentary Chronicles of Riddick was indeed accurate.
How does this work for organs that need to have their centre part thawed at the same rate?
Thawing is great. How are you going to freeze the tissue without damage?
So Walt is coming back ?
"I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary." Through the looking glass and what
freeze me now, grandma!
Does this mean that the underground organ trafficking black market will collapse very soon?
I know it was demonstrated awhile back that a rabbit kidney could be cryopreserved and then restored to function.
Seriously, the longer I live, the more it seems plausible that one day it will be possible to cryopreserve a human brain and restore it to function later. One day human lifespan may be greatly extended in a way that looks like this:
McCoy: "He's dead, Jim."
Kirk: "Bones, do something!"
McCoy: "Sorry, Jim, there isn't anything I can do."
KirK: "Why?"
McCoy: "Because he's dead."
Kirk: "How do you know he's dead?"
McCoy: "Because there's nothing I can do."
Kirk: "Because he's dead?"
McCoy: "That's right."
Kirk: "But I was talking to him just one minute ago!"
McCoy: "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a spiritual medium! I can't bring back the dead anymore than I can cure a common cold."
Spock: "Doctor, we could take him back to the ship, dissolve any blood clots, restore circulation, and restore homeostasis by molecular repair. He could fully resume duty within days."
McCoy: "Spock, leave doctoring to doctors! What this man needs is a decent burial."
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I can use this to thaw my steaks without accidentally cooking the edges in the microwave? Nice!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Unless this proves Futurama is a documentary, I am not impressed.
The photos are legit. 50 ml is a sizeable thaw sample. My biochem circuits assesses this as a considerable advance for cryogenics. YES The trials stop at 50 ml, which these days means larger volumes failed. NO It does not allow a human brain mass to be thawed. But, smaller thaws are still great news. Basic research would see a tremendous boon if experiments can be performed with larger frozen sample sizes. A great number of potential medical treatments would become feasible with a 50x advance in cryogenic thawing. Some people here need an opinion reboot. This is exciting news!
Ok, even if this only becomes partially successful, you could imagine it being used for an attempt by desperate individuals (or a desperate world) to send people to another star.
If only 25% of the individuals frozen, revived successfully after a centuries long trip, would it be worth it? And this is assuming the nanoparticles infected into them were non-toxic. I guess if the literal survival of the human race depended on it (I believe a third of the colonists at Plymouth didn't make it through the first winter).
Would be kinda creepy going into crysosleep knowing only a few would wake up (undamaged).
In fact I'd happily pay for the privilege to go...
There are quite a lot of people who would be willing to do the same thing today. Maybe get the process a bit more stable but a 25% chance sounds fine to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what's this computing device of which you speak?
It's damn cold here.
If you put a large potato in the microwave for two minutes, then cut it open, you'll find that the surface is hot and core is cool. The microwaves penetrate about 1/4th to 1/2 inch into the food. (More at the surface, reducing with depth). That's one reason TV dinners have the food spread out so thin - for even heating. That 1/2" of microwave heating is *more* even than a conventional oven, which heats only the surface.
can we thaw out Walt Disney?
I thought ice crystals form during freezing -- how do they form when thawing?
-Ok, samples 1-50 show perfect integrity after thawing...
* Well now what can we test this on?
-Dave, BRING ME THE HEAD OF WALT DISNEY!!!!
trump's heart and brain? or are they too far gone to even try?
So you need to add something that creates an amorphous solid ice when mixed with water, or at least far smaller ice crystals.
Which is exactly the technique used by some fishes that can survive in the ice :
they secrete some sort of anti-freeze in their bloodstream which prevent big ice crystals to form.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That was not without damage, though.
I've never heard of crystals forming when you warm a solid up to it's melting point.
Rather liquids are kind of the opposite of a crystaline structure last time I checked.
But they do form when freezing, and that's why they try to do the really rapid glassification as it is an attempt to stop all crystal formation, or at least limit their size to very small. Those crystals can and do puncture cell walls, which means that cell is a goner. Lose enough of those, or some really critical ones, and the creature is toast, end of game, don't even bother to thaw it out.
Now we do have some creatures that can survive freezing conditions, but they've got some tricks that aren't applicable to humans without some serious genetic modifications we don't even know how to do. The short version is they tend to flood their blood and cells with a type of antifreeze so there are less or smaller ice crystals so more of their tissue survives. Still, they can be killed by freezing. When you get to the single cell or other very simple types, it's a lot easier for them to survive since their structures are simpler and their cells less specialized.
I do find the idea of using induction to warm the material interesting, but having that material appropriately spread out in a living creature before freezing seems to be a rather difficult proposition. That's assuming those nano particles don't themselves cause an issue. I don't see it being done after freezing anymore than I see someone distributing sugar into an ice cube without pulverizing it. That would rather defeat the point.
Anyhow, interesting idea, but still, WTF
Bummer, Bob.
Yeah, sorry; we were unable to get you out of the red light ticket. So one of your kidneys? Yeah, it's going to the organ bank.
Freeze a jolly good fellow!
a development that could help get rid of organ transplant waiting lists
Waiting lists are the result of a shortage of organs, so there are no organs
in need to freeze and quick-thaw. That must mean potential recipients on the
waiting list will be frozen and the the quick-thaw technology will be applied to
them once a donor organ is available. Wonder if 'all-in-one' packages, which
include ski gear and body storage will become available...
It seems that most commenters think about the scifi theme of thawing entire human bodies after cryo-preservation.
To me, it rather seems that a first application would concern transplants - more organs could be collected, and be kept around much longer than presently possible, to be transplanted later into patients really needing them (as opposed to being able to pay for them).
It could help with reducing waiting lists, enable more people in need to survive, with less crime revolving about collection of organs.
All those people who has their bodies frozen... better hope somebodyvdoesn't thaw them out just to harvest their organs.
Go ahead.. sit there in that freezer and hope the world doesn't change so much that your body isn's salvaged by a scrapper.
Magic is only unexplained technology.
No. It just needs to be in close proximity to the cells in order to provide thr benefit, not in. As for cryogenically preserved dead people, while this will not bring them back to life, it will minimize tissue damahge so that whatever process might be used to bring them back to life would have a better chance of working over previous thawing techniques.
With a switchable magnet orders of magnitude stronger, you should be able to heat the hydrogen atoms directly, should you not? Here's a pic of a live frog levitating in a 16 Tesla magnetic field.
http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research...
... and make Disney great again!
So does this mean no more freezer burn on my steak?
So how soon can we see Ted Williams as skipper?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You knew he was going to be brought up sooner or later
The X-Files had an episode where a rapid freezing agent was the key enabler to allow people to time travel, but of course that means a future self will come back to kill you because time travel is so messed up, so it never really happens... Or does it?
Yes, smartypants.