Zhiquan Shu

By Zhiquan Shu, Shelly Heimfeld, Zhongping Huang, Carolyn Liu and Dayong Gao

Cellular therapy with stem and immune cells has demonstrated significant success both in clinical treatments and the industrial market. Cryopreservation is a necessary and essential component of cellular therapy. In this chapter, first of all, some basic theories of cryoinjury and techniques in cryopreservation are reviewed. Then it focuses on the progress of cryopreservation of stem cells and immune cells, including new protocols and techniques, alternative cryoprotective agents (CPA), side effects after transplantation, and advances in reducing adverse reactions. Strategies to minimize adverse effects include medication before and after transplantation, optimizing the infusion procedure, reducing the CPA concentration or using alternative CPAs for cryopreservation, and removing CPA prior to infusion. Traditional and newly developed approaches including methods and devices for CPA removal are discussed. Future work is recommended including further optimization of cryopreservation protocols especially for lymphocytes; standardization of the optimized protocols with temperature monitoring and quality control; exploration of DMSO-free, serum-free, and even xeno-free media for cryopreservation; development of simple, reliable, and cost-effective devices for cryopreservation; and more fundamental cryobiological studies to avoid cellular injury.Keywords: cryopreservation, stem cell, immune cell, cytotherapy

Part of the book: Progress in Stem Cell Transplantation

By Zhiquan Shu, Hsiu-Hung Chen, Xiaoming Zhou and Dayong Gao

This chapter presents an important application of the electrical conductivity measurement in cryopreservation. Long-term cryopreservation of cells and tissues is essential in both clinical treatments and fundamental researches. In order to reduce the cryo-injury to the cells during cryopreservation, cryoprotective agents (CPAs) should be added before freezing, but also removed after thawing duo to the cytotoxicity. In these steps, severe osmotic stresses may result in injuries to the cells too. Therefore, monitoring the addition and removal of CPAs to the cell samples is critical in order to prevent the osmotic injury. In this chapter, the electrical conductivity measurement was applied to assess the CPA concentration in cryopreservation. Firstly, the standard correlations between the CPA concentration and the electrical conductivity of the solutions (including CPA-NaCl-water ternary solutions and CPA-albumin-NaCl-water quaternary solutions) were experimentally obtained for a few mostly used CPAs. Then a novel ?dilution-filtration? system with hollow fiber dialyzer was designed and applied to remove the CPA from the solutions effectively. Measurement of electrical conductivity was validated as a safer and easier way to on-line and real-time monitoring of CPA concentration in cell suspensions. This work demonstrated a very important application of electrical conductivity in the biomedical engineering field.

Part of the book: Electrical Resistivity and Conductivity