Scientists use magnetic nanotech to safely rewarm frozen tissues for transplant

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-scientists-magnetic-nanotech-safely-rewarm.html

by PaulHoule • 2 years ago

163 28 2 years ago

I immediately thought about ice crystals, but the article addresses that:

Methods have been developed to quickly freeze organs for longer-term storage without risking damage from ice crystal formation, but ice crystals can also form during warming. To address this problem, Yadong Yin and colleagues advanced a technique known as nanowarming, pioneered by collaborator John Bischof, to employ magnetic nanoparticles and magnetic fields to thaw frozen tissues rapidly, evenly and safely.

hrdwdmrbl• 2 years ago

It isn't mentioned, but I would think that this works for cryonics... the ice crystals were one of the biggest sticking points. Well, aside from the original cause of death of course

PaulHoule• 2 years ago

I remember an arc in the Dick Tracy comic strip in the 1980s where the villain was a cryonics expert who had invented some quick way to thaw out corpsicles and thus revive arch criminals of the past.

https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Kryos_Freezdrei

robertlagrant• 2 years ago

That is a stellar bad guy name.

seper8• 2 years ago

First thing that came to my mind too, always wonder whether we'd ever get that far. Can we make our brains persist on ice?

excalibur• 2 years ago

I would say more research needed, but it seems promising to me. After we get it working for transplant organs would probably be a better time to investigate this application.

idontwantthis• 2 years ago

I think the harder part is freezing fast enough. Experiments have been done with freezing and thawing small mammals. They survived but there was a maximum size after which they couldn’t be frozen solid pretty much instantly.

Bluestein• 2 years ago

Same.-

Long way to go yet though. So, we bring - let's say - Disney back. How do we reanimate? Apart from, of course, curing what killed them.-

Severian• 2 years ago

So, induction heating, got it.

throw310822• 2 years ago

The second field realigned the nanoparticles, effectively tapping the brakes on heat production. The heating slowed fastest in areas with more nanoparticles

Probably very stupid question, but can this be used also for cooling? Let the nanoparticles absorb some heat, then use a magnetic field to align them, then repeat?

actionfromafar2• 2 years ago

First I was going to say no, but now.. maybe?

Like a Peltier element but remotely…

m3kw9• 2 years ago

who's gonna cool the magnetic dispenser?

adrian_b2• 2 years ago

There is no mechanism for cooling the magnetite particles below the ambient temperature.

A ferromagnetic material that is placed in an alternating magnetic field is heated by the so-called hysteresis losses, which happen when the material is magnetized, demagnetized and remagnetized. This can be seen e.g. in an electric transformer with a ferrite core, where the transformer core will become hot during operation (the iron cores used in low-frequency transformers are also heated by eddy currents, like an induction stove, but ferrites are insulators, so they are heated only by hysteresis losses).

Because the magnetite nanorods are anisotropic, the heat produced will depend on their orientation vs. the alternating magnetic field.

This is used to modify the heating rate, but there is no way to do cooling.

There exist magnetic refrigerators, which are based on the magnetocaloric effect, but they use very different magnetic materials, e.g. based on gadolinium or other rare-earth metals. Those are efficient only at extremely low temperatures, close to zero kelvin, so they would be useless for freezing animal tissues.

web007• 2 years ago

Reminds me of microwaves - one of the early uses of microwave heating was to reanimate frozen hamsters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Discovery

vasco• 2 years ago

So all those dreams of freezing your dead body for science to revive you later when it advances weren't that crazy after all. Or at least this might give a renewed source of customers with too much money to grifters promising eternal life.

echelon• 2 years ago

If you're trying to speed run immortality, it's probably best to avoid solutions to longevity that rely on your descendants not turning you into an amusement park ride.

Lots of dead people are going to wake up in horror simulators. Or as Tamagotchi.

iknowstuff• 2 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_Park

radu_floricica• 2 years ago

It was never crazy, just... early.

Not being able to hit Pause on a medical issue will probably seem on par with doing healthcare without antibiotics. We simply happen to live in the years before that.

swader999• 2 years ago

@hansolo

tke248• 2 years ago

Get this in my microwave stat!

ImHereToVote• 2 years ago

Let's go!

nullc• 2 years ago

Good news: You've been revived!

Bad news: Now you're dying of metallic nano-particle poisoning

actionfromafar2• 2 years ago

Chelates for that and so forth and at the end of the chain the gorillas freeze to death in the winter!

adrian_b2• 2 years ago

Iron is less dangerous than most metals, but such excessive quantities in an insoluble crystal form, where the iron has to be reduced to become soluble, might create hard to predict problems.

trhway• 2 years ago

anybody knows why portable ECMO isn't used for the organs?

pkaye• 2 years ago

This company makes organ transport boxes that circulate blood through the organs and control temperature. Many transplant center in the US are using it.

https://www.transmedics.com/ocs-hcp/

flysand7• 2 years ago

I wonder what's going to happen the person who got saved with a transplant warmed up using a ferromagnetic nanomaterial goes to MRI

...damn

Scientists use magnetic nanotech to safely rewarm frozen tissues for transplant

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