July 2, 1998 Contact: Leila Belkora (312) 996-3457 [email protected]
NEW PROCESS FREEZES LIVING CELLS TO TREAT BURNS
A bioengineer at the University of Illinois at Chicago is developing a process to freeze and thaw skin grafts for use in treating burn injuries. Jens Karlsson, a UIC assistant professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering, will develop the lifesaving technology with a $203,000 grant from the Whitaker Foundation of Rosslyn, Va. "Maintaining cells in a state of 'suspended animation' by freezing would also be beneficial for medical transplants, or for banking valuable biological materials such as genetically engineered cell lines or livestock reproductive cells," Karlsson said. "With the emerging tissue engineering industry, cryopreservation will be a critical technology." Karlsson's goal is to develop cryopreservation techniques that avoid the often severe cell damage which can occur during freezing and thawing.
"Many laboratories have standard procedures for freezing and thawing cells, developed by trial and error," he said. "That usually works well enough, because it may not be a problem if they destroy 50 percent of their cells; they can simply wait for the cells to grow back in culture.
"Survival of the cells is more critical in certain applications, however. If we take an artificial tissue out of the freezer, thaw it, and half of it is gone, that's a problem. If a patient comes in with a burn injury, we don't have time to wait for the cells to grow back." As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Karlsson was interested in research at Harvard Medical School to develop an artificial liver. He was intrigued to learn that, even if the project were successful, existing technology could not preserve the organ for shipping or storage before transplantation. Now Karlsson is applying his training as a physicist and engineer to find the technology to preserve organs and other biological material. There are several factors affecting the cells' survival -- how rapidly they are cooled or warmed and what chemicals are added to samples before freezing, for example. Karlsson and his research group are seeking an engineer's "rational design" solution to find the best cryopreservation conditions. - UIC -
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