The cold world of organ freezing – science newsAugust 19, 1972
If whole organs could be frozen and stored… surgeons could perform many more transplants… However, despite all their efforts, cryobiologists (biologists who study the effects of cold on life) have not had much success with organ freezing… No one to date has cooled whole mammalian hearts lower [than −20° Celsius] or longer [than six hours] and revived them.
To update
Scientists still struggle to keep donor hearts on ice for more than six hours, but it is now possible to store a different organ, the liver, in sub-zero temperatures for more than a day. The challenge has been figuring out how to prevent the ice from crystallizing and damaging the cells. In 2019, scientists reported that they successfully heated several human livers after supercool them for 27 hours (SN: 10/12/19 and 10/26/19, p. 10). This and other preservation methods such as high pressure freezing either thawing using nanoparticles they’re not ready for the operating room yet, but they have the potential to save thousands of life-saving organs from going to waste each year.