Energy, Materials and Systems Group, University of Twente, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Physics of Fluids Group, MESA+ Institute, University of Twente, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 5;9(1):3510. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40115-6.
A fresh and frozen high-quality patient bio-sample is required in molecular medicine for the identification of disease-associated mechanism at molecular levels. A common cooling procedure is immersing the tissue enclosed in a vial in a coolant such as liquid nitrogen. This procedure is not user friendly and is laborious as reducing the lag time from excision time to freezing depends on the logistic organizational structure within a hospital. Moreover snapfreezing must be done as soon as possible after tissue excision to preserve the tissue quality for molecular tests. Herein, we report an electrically powered snap freezing device as an alternative to quenching the vial in liquid nitrogen and therefore can be used directly at the location where the tissue is acquired. This device also facilitates the study of the effect of freezing conditions on the various molecular processes in the samples. Cooling experiments of a vial in the snap freezing device show that the cooling rates similar to or faster than quenching in liquid nitrogen are feasible. We performed experiments with several set point conditions and compared the results with a mathematical model.
在分子医学中，需要新鲜和冷冻的高质量患者生物样本，以在分子水平上识别与疾病相关的机制。一种常见的冷却程序是将装在小瓶中的组织浸入冷却剂（例如液氮）中。该程序不便于用户使用，并且很费力，因为从切除时间到冷冻的滞后时间取决于医院内的后勤组织结构。此外，必须尽快进行快速冷冻，以保持组织质量用于分子测试。在这里，我们报告了一种电动快速冷冻设备，可替代在液氮中淬火小瓶，因此可以直接在获取组织的位置使用。该设备还便于研究冷冻条件对样品中各种分子过程的影响。在快速冷冻设备中小瓶的冷却实验表明，类似于或快于在液氮中淬火的冷却速率是可行的。我们进行了几种设定点条件的实验，并将结果与数学模型进行了比较。
