Groundbreaking Technology Successfully Rewarms Large-Scale Tissues Preserved at Low Temperatures

A research team, led by the University of Minnesota, has discovered a groundbreaking process to successfully rewarm large-scale animal heart valves and blood vessels preserved at very low temperatures. The discovery is a major step forward in saving millions of human lives by increasing the availability of organs and tissues for transplantation through the establishment of tissue and organ banks.

The research was published today in Science Translational Medicine. The University of Minnesota holds two patents related to this discovery.

"This is the first time that anyone has been able to scale up to a larger biological system and demonstrate successful, fast, and uniform warming of hundreds of degrees Celsius per minute of preserved tissue without damaging the tissue," said University of Minnesota mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering professor John Bischof, the senior author of the study.

Bischof said in the past, researchers were only able to show success at about 1 milliliter of tissue and solution. This study scales up to 50 milliliters, which means there is a strong possibility they could scale up to even larger systems, like organs.

Currently, more than 60 percent of the hearts and lungs donated for transplantation must be discarded each year 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, that cool biological samples to an ice-free glassy state using very low temperatures between -160 and -196 degrees Celsius have been around for decades. However, the biggest problem has been with the rewarming. Tissues often suffer major damage during the rewarming process making them unusable, especially at larger scales.

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