With an ever-ageing population in the Western world, the need for regenerative medicine, especially transplantation is increasing, but the number of donors remains static. Therefore improved storage methods for cells/tissues/organs is urgently required to overcome their limited shelf-life. Antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGPs) from polar fish slow ice crystal growth and may find application in cryopreservation, but are limited by their extremely high costs, challenging synthesis and potential toxicity. To address this, we have developed synthetic polymers which can reproduce the desirable properties of AFGPs, without the side effects, at lower cost. We have recently demonstrated that synthetic polymers designed to inhibit ice recrystallisation (growth) improve the cryopreservation of red blood cells (Figure 1) without the need for any toxic organic solvents (traditional method), using 400 x less material.[1-3]Figure 1  . AFGP mimetic materials. A) Native AFGP; ice crystals grown in (B) buffer solution alone and (C) with AFGP-mimic polymer; (D) shows blood cryopreservation in presence of polymer with specific ice recrystallisation inhibition.References Deller, R.C., Vatish, M., Mitchell, D.A., Gibson, M.I., Nature Communications , 2014 , 5, 3244Congdon, TC, Notman, R., Gibson, MI, Biomacromolecules , 2013 , 14, 1578Deller, R.C., Congdon, T., Sahid, M., Morgan, M., Vatish, M., Mitchell, D.A., Notman, R., Gibson, M.I., Biomaterials Science , 2013 , 1, 478

Synthetic polymer that reproduces the function of antifreeze proteins and enables cellular cryopreservation without solvents

248th National Meeting (2014)

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