Red blood cells underpin larges amounts of trauma medicine, and other areas. TO ensure constant supply, one solution is to freeze (cryopreserve) the blood, and this is currently achieved by using glycerol. Before the blood cells can be transfused the cryooprotectants must be washed away, using a series of washing buffers, which leads to some loss of RBCs. In our latest publication, we explored alternative cryoprotectants based on DMSO and trehalose, with the addition of a polyampholyte, which we have previous found to be useful for the cryopreservation of nucleated cells. Following a screen of the different compositions, we identified a mixture which enabled <3 % post-thaw heamolysis (damaged blood cells). Following washing the total recovery was 80 %, which considered this was done manually, with no automated washing was a very signifcant result. We used microscopy and ATP assays to further confirm these results and even showed the system works in a 'blood bag'.

Read the work here

Red Blood Cell Cryopreservation with Minimal Post-Thaw Lysis Enabled by a Synergistic Combination of a Cryoprotecting Polyampholyte with DMSO/Trehalose,