21st Century Medicine (21CM) is a California cryobiological research company which has as its primary focus the development of
perfusates and
protocols for
viable long-term
cryopreservation of human
organs
In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function. In the hierarchy of life, an organ lies between tissue and an organ system. Tissues are formed from same type cells to act together in a fu ...
,
tissues and
cells at temperatures below −100 °C through the use of
vitrification
Vitrification (from Latin ''vitreum'', "glass" via French ''vitrifier'') is the full or partial transformation of a substance into a glass, that is to say, a non-crystalline amorphous solid. Glasses differ from liquids structurally and glasses po ...
. 21CM was founded in 1993.
In 2004 21CM received a $900,000 grant from the
U.S. National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1 ...
(NIH) to study a preservation solution developed by the
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees.
The University of Roc ...
in New York for extending simple cold storage time of human hearts removed for
transplant
Transplant or Transplantation may refer to:
Sciences
*Transplanting a plant from one location to another
*Organ transplantation, moving an organ from one body to another
*Transplant thought experiment, an experiment similar to Trolley problem
*Tra ...
.
At the July 2005 annual conference of the Society for
Cryobiology
Cryobiology is the branch of biology that studies the effects of low temperatures on living things within Earth's cryosphere or in science. The word cryobiology is derived from the Greek words κρῧος ryos "cold", βίος ios "life", and λό ...
, 21st Century Medicine announced the vitrification of a rabbit
kidney
The kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped organs found in vertebrates. They are located on the left and right in the retroperitoneal space, and in adult humans are about in length. They receive blood from the paired renal arteries; blood ...
to −135 °C with their vitrification mixture. The kidney was successfully transplanted upon rewarming to a rabbit, the rabbit being euthanized on the 48th day for
histological follow-up.
On February 9, 2016, 21st Century Medicine won the
Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize. On March 13, 2018, they won the
Large Mammal Brain Preservation Prize.
References
External links
Official website
{{Cryonics
Cryobiology
Cryogenics