Cryopreservation of germplasm (GP) (sperm, oocytes, embryos, stem cells, ovarian tissues) is essential for preserving the genetic variety of model animals, reproductive health in humans, the animal breeding industry and wildlife conservation. Although many methods, devices, and equipment exist both for slow freezing and fast cooling (vitrification), each method, cell type and species practically needs its own optimal preservation protocol. Vitrification (VF) is gaining in popularity with successful protocols being developed for many types of GP, including spermatozoa and stem cells. However, all existing VF methods require complicated and careful timing, may be prone to technical errors, often are not scalable, and are limited to very small sample volumes (0.5-5 ?L). As such, cryopreservation of samples such as semen, cord blood stem cells, and sufficient amounts of pluripotent stem cells and ovarian tissue is extremely difficult. The other aspect is that while th amount of potentially toxic cryoprotective agents (CPA) has been greatly reduced, the concentrations are still relatively high for the majority of GP types, and beside toxicity, the CPA addition and elution times must be precisely controlled. One of the major factors for vitrification is the critical cooling rate necessary for vitrification (Bcr), which strongly and inversely depend on the CPA concentration, For example, hundreds of thousands of ?C/min are needed to vitrify a water-glycerol solution that is tolerable for ALL CPA species concentrations. All existing methods purport to achieve such high speeds, but many have not in fact done so, mainly due to the Leidenfrost effect (LFE) - where a boiling nitrogen vapor coat forms around the sample. This vapor coat impairs thermal conductivity by orders of magnitude and makes even droplets that are a fraction of a ? m L impossible to vitrify. With a speed around 500,000 ?K/min, we hypothesize that we can vitrify practically ALL species of germplasm using a unified method, equipment and supplies. Our Celltronix team has developed a completely new system for hyperfast cooling, called """"""""KrioBlast(r)"""""""", which completely eliminates LFE and can cool much larger samples than those currently used at rates of hundreds of thousands ?C/min. We have built a pilot model (first generation) of the system, the manually operated Krioblast-1, with which we could vitrify large sample volumes with dilute CPA solutions and also achieved some promising results for two trials on human and bull sperm. Upon obtaining a higher cooling rate, we will be close to devising a """"""""Universal Cryopreservation Protocol"""""""". In this Project, we will buil a semi-automatic system Krioblast-2, which would produce 2-3 fold faster cooling rates with a target of 200,000 ?C/min and vitrify cell volumes of up to 4,000 mL (1-2 orders of magnitude higher than is currently possible). We believe that such rates will be sufficient to vitrify all tyes of GP using a practically unified protocol. In Phase II, we will build a closed modular stem for hyperfast cooling, cryogenic storage and shipment, and hyperfast thawing of cells and test Krioblast-3 on real germplasm cells.
Cryopreservation of germplasm (sperm, oocytes, embryos, stem cells, ovarian tissues) is essential for preserving the genetic variety of model animals, assisting human fertility techniques, the animal breeding industry, and wildlife conservation. A large variety of cryopreservation methods, devices and equipment currently exists, but each method, cell type and species would need its own optimal protocol. The goal of this Project is to develop a novel scalable device for hyper-fast (hundreds of thousands of ?C/min) cooling that would allow vitrification of a wide variety of germplasm cells and species using unified equipment and protocols, which will not only significantly benefit germplasm cryopreservation, but may eventually shift cryopreservation paradigms.
