PHASE II: NON-TOXIC, HIGHLY-EFFECTIVE BIOINSPIRED CRYOPROTECTANTS

On-demand cell and tissue samples are critical for both mass trauma care and advanced personalized medical procedures and continue to grow in importance. Biological tissue banks to support these on-demand applications lack safe and effective long-term storage methods. Current cryopreservation techniques and protocols use toxic cryoprotective agents that prevent successful full viability recovery of therapeutic cells, tissues, and organs and hinder the logistics of biobanking and advanced regenerative medicine. This lack of a hyper-effective and safe alternative leads to wide spread use of toxic cryoprotectants.Preventing ice remains a physical and chemical problem and innovative cryoprotectants can be realized using new chemistries. In Phase I, we developed a fundamentally different approach to cryoprotectant discovery and our first low-toxicity biomimetic antifreeze that is chemically stable at a variety of temperatures (-196C to 250C), hundreds of times more effective, and far less toxic at effective concentration.In Phase II, we will examine these properties in greater detail while developing our commercial storage solutions to protect cells and tissues. We will do this by targeting the preservation of valuable hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) for bone marrow transplant and show scale-up of this technology by preserving murine hearts below freezing temperatures before surgical transplantation.