Erscheint 6 Ausgaben pro Jahr
ISSN Druckformat: 2152-5102
ISSN Online: 2152-5110
Indexed in
Current Problems of Heat and Mass Transfer in the Cryopreservation of Biomaterials: Interactions among Coupled Multiscale Transport Processes
ABSTRAKT
Although the low temperature storage of cells and tissues for transplantation offers a great potential advantage in the treatment of numerous diseases, many practical applications have been limited by the ability to understand and control the heat and mass transfer processes that govern cryopreservation protocols. These process typically occur across length scales that may differ by many orders of magnitude. Further, the presence of individual cells and tissues introduces additional scaling parameters that may influence the transport phenomena. Among the most challenging problems are effecting the coupled transport of water and a cryoprotective agent (CPA) into and out of a tissue and its constituent cells, manipulating the thermal boundary conditions during freezing to produce an acceptable redistribution of solute rejected from the growing ice front, and controlling the osmotic and mechanical stresses that govern the movement of chemical species in tissues during cryopreservation. Approaches will be presented by which each of these problems may be addressed.