Blood can be stored for many years by freezing

Millions of units of blood are donated each year to the blood bank but normally can only be stored for about 6 months. Thanks to a recent study by scientists at Louisville University, Kentucky, USA, this difficulty can be solved.

Scientists have developed a new technique to freeze blood so that blood can be stored for years . This is a major advance not only for hospitals but also for emergencies such as on the front or even in space.

This is a new way to load trehalose sugar into red blood cells so that these cells still survive the freezing process.

Jonathan Kopechek, assistant professor of the Department of Biotechnology, University of Louisville, said the freezing process was based on the standard method commonly used to produce dry pharmaceuticals, including sample freezing. and evaporates water under vacuum. The only unique feature in this study is a new way to load trehalose sugar into red blood cells so that these cells still survive the freezing process.

This innovative method uses ultrasound to create pores in the blood cells that allow researchers to load trehalose sugar molecules . Although this study is only at an experimental stage, trehalose sugar has previously been shown to be safe. This sugar is also used as a preservative for some types of food. 

But Mr. Kopechek said that more research is needed to confirm that this method can be applied to blood preservation in banks. 'There is still much to be done before using this technique to produce dry blood for therapeutic use. We are continuing our work to increase the scale of production of a larger amount of dry blood and further tests will be conducted to test the functional and quality characteristics of cells after freezing. '

The research was published in the American scientific journal Biomicrofluidics.

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