New technology developed to safely thaw frozen organs using tiny bar magnets, with hopes of establishing long-term organ preservation technology

Research is underway on 'organ cryopreservation technology' to increase the success rate of organ transplants. A research team at the University of California has recently announced a 'method to rapidly and safely thaw frozen organs.'

Magnetic-Nanorod-Mediated Nanowarming with Uniform and Rate-Regulated Heating | Nano Letters

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c03081

Scientists use magnetic nanotech to safely rewarm frozen tissues for transplant
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-scientists-magnetic-nanotech-safely-rewarm.html

Generally, organs used for transplantation are stored in a refrigerator, but the disadvantage of this is that the storage period is very short, which means that it is difficult to obtain the right organs at the right time. Research and development of technology to freeze and store organs is underway to solve this problem.

A major problem with cryopreserving organs is that the tissue is destroyed when thawed. For this reason, there is a need to develop not only freezing techniques, but also thawing techniques that do not destroy tissue.

A research team at the University of California, San Luis, has developed a new technology to thaw frozen organs quickly and safely using magnetic nanoparticles. Magnetic nanoparticles are simply 'very small bar magnets' that generate heat when exposed to an alternating magnetic field .

By using magnetic nanoparticles, it is possible to rapidly thaw frozen organs stored at minus 50 degrees. However, this method has the problem that 'if the magnetic nanoparticles are distributed unevenly, overheating occurs in areas with high density of magnetic nanoparticles.' To solve this problem, the research team adopted a method of 'first exposing the magnetic nanoparticles to an alternating magnetic field to raise the temperature to the melting point, and when the temperature reaches near the melting point, exposing them to a static magnetic field to align the magnetic nanoparticles and suppress overheating.'

The team says the thawing method using magnetic nanoparticles has already been successfully tested on cultured human skin fibroblasts and pig carotid arteries, and that the technology it developed will be useful for long-term organ preservation.