Journal
COMPARATIVE BIOCHEMISTRY AND PHYSIOLOGY A-MOLECULAR & INTEGRATIVE PHYSIOLOGY
Volume 131, Issue 3, Pages 535-543Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/S1095-6433(01)00505-0
Keywords
desiccation tolerance; freeze-drying; glasses; platelets; trehalose
Categories
Funding
- NATIONAL HEART, LUNG, AND BLOOD INSTITUTE [R01HL057810, R01HL061204] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NHLBI NIH HHS [HL61204, HL57810] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Using what has been learned from nature, it has become possible to stabilize biological structures, including intact cells, in the dry state. Stabilization of cells or tissues in the dried state is of considerable practical significance, as is described in this review. The need for stabilization of cells in the dried state is particularly urgent in bloodbanks, where proper storage of blood cells (platelets and erythrocytes) is still a major problem. Human blood platelets are stored in blood banks for 5 days, after which they are discarded according to Federal regulation. This short lifetime has led to a chronic shortage of platelets. We report here that platelets can be preserved by freeze-drying them with trehalose, a sugar Found at high concentrations in organisms that naturally survive drying. We suggest that this finding will obviate the storage problem with platelets and that the principles established here may be extended to more complex eukaryotic cells. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available