The icy world of organ freezing – Science News, August 19, 1972
If entire organs may very well be frozen and saved … surgeons would be capable to carry out much more transplants…. For all their efforts, although, cryobiologists (biologists who research the results of chilly on life) haven’t been very profitable with organ freezing…. Nobody thus far has cooled entire mammalian hearts any decrease [than −20° Celsius] or longer [than six hours] and revived them.
Update
Scientists nonetheless battle to maintain donor hearts on ice for longer than six hours, however it’s now doable to retailer a distinct organ — the liver — at below-freezing temperatures for greater than a day. The problem has been determining tips on how to cease ice from crystallizing and damaging cells. In 2019, scientists reported efficiently warming up a number of human livers after supercooling them for 27 hours (SN: 10/12/19 & 10/26/19, p. 10). This and different preservation strategies reminiscent of freezing at excessive pressures or thawing utilizing nanoparticles aren’t but prepared for the working room, however they’ve the potential to maintain 1000’s of lifesaving organs from going to waste every year.