Vitrification of mononuclear cells isolated from umbilical cord blood

Abstract

Mononuclear cells present in the blood are responsible for producing the different components of the blood as they contain hematopoietic stem cells. They are also found to contain mesenchymal stem cells which can be differentiated into cartilage, connective tissue and bone tissue. For these reasons, steps had been taken to preserve them for use in tissue engineering. Three different techniques of cryopreservation had been carried out for MNCs isolated from umbilical cord blood and the viability of each was compared. Here, we introduced a new set up for vitrifying cells which proved to be a scalable cryopreserving tool. In this set up N2 vapour was used for dispersing the droplets of MNC solution supplied by a pump into the liquid nitrogen. N2 not only dispersed the droplets but also pre cooled the dispersed droplets before it reached liquid nitrogen. The MNC droplets were collected by cell strainers kept in liquid nitrogen it was stored in vapour phase liquid nitrogen (-150oC) after vitrification, which was later thawed and tested for viability.