MOLECULAR ICE CONTROL FOR ENGINEERED TISSUES

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Long term preservation is crucial as an enabling technology for tissue engineering. Cryopreservation would provide an ideal solution to this need except that ice crystallization in complex multicomponent tissues causes injury to the cells and the extracellular matrix rendering the tissue nonfunctional. Vitreous cryopreservation that stabilizes the biosystem as a glass, thereby avoiding ice crystallization, leads to markedly improved cryopreservation. However, vitrification is not easily achieved in bulk samples relevant to clinical applications because of constraints on attaining sufficiently high cooling and warming rates to preclude ice formation. The ultimate goal of banking natural and engineered tissues using vitrification will be achieved only if adequate methods of controlling ice growth are devised. This study is focused on a novel approach to controlling ice in complex tissues by combining conventional cryoprotective agents with synthetic ice blocker (SIB) molecules and naturally-occurring antifreeze peptides. SIBs are a series of proprietary molecules designed on the basis of molecular-modeling studies to limit ice nucleation and growth. Existing and newly designed SIBs will be applied to the challenge of designing solutions for vitrifying bulk samples without ice damage and showing feasibility for the long-term storage of vascular grafts.