690510login-checkScientists successfully unfroze rat organs and transplanted them — a ‘historic’ step that could someday transform transplant medicine |
By Marion Renault
The rat kidney was peculiarly beautiful — an edgeless viscera about the size of a quarter, gemstone-like and gleaming as if encased in pure glass.
It owed its veneer to a frosty, minus 150-degree Celsius plunge into liquid nitrogen, a process known as vitrification, that shocked the kidney into an icy state of suspended animation. Then researchers at the University of Minnesota restarted the kidney’s biological clock, rewarming it before transplanting it back into a live rat — who survived the ordeal. Read the full article in STAT.
690510login-checkScientists successfully unfroze rat organs and transplanted them — a ‘historic’ step that could someday transform transplant medicine |