Adam Higgins

Oregon State University | OSU · School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering

Vitrification is a promising cryopreservation technique for complex specimens such as tissues and organs. However, it is challenging to identify mixtures of cryoprotectants (CPAs) that prevent ice formation without exerting excessive toxicity. In this work, we developed a multi-CPA toxicity model that predicts the toxicity kinetics of mixtures cont...

While in most cases, jaundice can be effectively treated using phototherapy, severe cases require exchange transfusion, a relatively risky procedure in which the neonate's bilirubin-rich blood is replaced with donor blood. Here, we examine extracorporeal blood treatment in a microfluidic photoreactor as an alternative to exchange transfusion. This...

Successful cryopreservation of complex specimens, such as tissues and organs, would greatly benefit both the medical and scientific research fields. Vitrification is one of the most promising techniques for complex specimen cryopreservation, but toxicity remains a major challenge due to the high concentration of cryoprotectants (CPAs) needed to vit...

In brief In silico predictions validated in this study demonstrate the potential for designing shorter equilibration protocols that improve post-warming re-expansion and hatching rates of D7 and D8 in vitro- produced bovine embryos. Our results benefit the livestock industry by providing a refined and reproducible approach to cryopreserving bovine...

Organ cryopreservation would revolutionize transplantation by overcoming the shelf-life limitations of conventional organ storage. To prepare an organ for cryopreservation, it is first perfused with cryoprotectants (CPAs). These chemicals can enable vitrification during cooling, preventing ice damage. However, CPAs can also cause toxicity and osmot...

The ability to cryopreserve bone marrow within the vertebral body (VB) would offer significant clinical and research benefits. However, cryopreservation of large structures, such as VBs, is challenging due to mass transport limitations that prevent the effective delivery of cryoprotectants into the tissue. To overcome this challenge, we examined th...

Development of successful tissue cryopreservation methods requires specific knowledge regarding tissue permeation of individual cryoprotective agents (CPAs) and their combinations. The present study assessed the permeation of dimethyl sulfoxide, ethylene glycol, and propylene glycol into liver tissue, and addressed whether the diffusion coefficient...

Cryopreservation of in vitro-produced (IVP) embryos has become an important part of the bovine embryo-transfer industry. While vitrification seems more efficient for IVP embryos, there is not yet a standardised protocol that results in pregnancy rates comparable to those obtained when fresh embryos are transferred, especially when blastocysts are v...

Successful cryopreservation requires the addition of cryoprotective agents (CPAs). The addition of permeating CPAs, such as glycerol, is associated with some risk to the cells and tissues. These risks are both related to the CPA themselves (CPA toxicity) and to the volume response of the cell (osmotic damage). To minimize the potential for damage d...

The cryopreservation of mammalian oocytes and embryos has become an integral part of assisted reproduction in both humans and veterinary species. However, the methods used to cryopreserve bovine oocytes still have significant shortcomings. A wide variety of approaches has been used to try to improve and optimize methods of cryopreservation. However...

Aquaglyceroporins are known as channel proteins, and are able to transport water and small neutral solutes. In this study, we evaluate the effect of exposure of in vitro matured bovine oocytes to hyperosmotic solutions containing ethylene glycol (EG), dimethyl sulfoxide (Me2SO) or sucrose on the expression levels of AQP3, AQP7 and AQP9. Moreover, w...

The ability to cryopreserve organs would have an enormous impact in transplantation medicine. To investigate organ cryopreservation strategies, experiments are typically done on whole organs, or on cells in 2D culture. Whole organs are not amenable to high throughput investigation, while conventional 2D culture is limited to a single cell type and...

The plasma membrane permeability to water and cryoprotectant (CPA) significantly impacts vitrification efficiency of bovine oocytes. Our study was designed to determine the concentration-dependent permeability characteristics for immature (GV) and mature (MII) bovine oocytes in the presence of ethylene glycol (EG) and dimethyl sulphoxide (Me 2 SO),...

Mass transfer of protectant chemicals is a fundamental aspect of cryopreservation and freeze-drying protocols. As such, mass transfer modeling is useful for design of preservation methods. Cell membrane transport modeling has been successfully used to guide design of preservation methods for isolated cells. For tissues, though, there are several ma...

Cryopreservation in a vitrified state has vast potential for long-term storage of tissues and organs that may be damaged by ice formation. However, the toxicity imparted by the high concentration of cryoprotectants (CPAs) required to vitrify these specimens remains a hurdle. To address this challenge, we previously developed a mathematical approach...

In North America, red blood cells (RBCs) are currently cryopreserved in a solution of 40% glycerol. While glycerol is not inherently toxic to humans, it must be removed prior to transfusion to prevent intravascular osmotic hemolysis. The current deglycerolization procedure requires about 45 min per RBC unit. We previously presented predictions sugg...

Long-term storage of viable mammalian cells is important for applications ranging from in vitro fertilization to cell therapy. Cryopreservation is currently the most common approach, but storage in liquid nitrogen is relatively costly and the requirement for low temperatures during shipping is inconvenient. Desiccation is an alternative strategy wi...

Moisture content data for all mixtures and relative humidity environments. (XLSX)

Glass transition temperatures for all mixtures. (XLSX)

Cryopreservation can be used for long-term preservation of tissues and organs. It relies on using complex mixtures of cryoprotective agents (CPAs) to reduce the damaging effects of freezing, but care should be taken to avoid toxic effects of CPAs themselves. In order to rationally design cryopreservation strategies for tissues, it is important to p...

For more than fifty years the human red blood cell (RBC) has been a widely studied model for transmembrane mass transport. Existing literature spans myriad experimental designs with varying results and physiologic interpretations. In this review, we examine the kinetics and mechanisms of membrane transport in the context of RBC cryopreservation. We...

There is growing need for cryopreserved tissue samples that can be used in transplantation and regenerative medicine. While a number of specific tissue types have been successfully cryopreserved, this success is not general, and there is not a uniform approach to cryopreservation of arbitrary tissues. Additionally, while there are a number of long-...

Increasingly, instructors of large, introductory STEM courses are having students actively engage during class by answering multiple-choice concept questions individually and in groups. This study investigates the use of a technology-based tool that allows students to answer such questions during class. The tool also allows the instructor to prompt...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential for cryopreservation of granulocytes using 30% glycerol. Recently reported permeability data was used to design two different methods for addition and removal of glycerol: a fast method that is predicted to keep cell volumes between 80% and 150% of the isotonic volume and a slow method that...

Ice-free cryopreservation, known as vitrification, is an appealing approach for banking of adherent cells and tissues because it prevents dissociation and morphological damage that may result from ice crystal formation. However, current vitrification methods are often limited by the cytotoxicity of the concentrated cryoprotective agent (CPA) soluti...

Freeze-drying, or lyophilization, has shown great promise in addressing many of the logistical challenges of storing and preserving red blood cells (RBCs). A crucial part of any RBC lyophilization protocol is the primary drying temperature, which affects the sample drying rate and the dried cake's ability to form a stable glassy solid. Primary dryi...

Long-term storage of tissue by cryopreservation is necessary for the efficient mass production of tissue engineered products, and for reducing the urgency and cost of organ transplantation procedures. The goal of this work was to investigate the physical processes thought result in damage during tissue cryopreservation towards development of tissue...

Cryopreservation of complex tissues and organs will undoubtedly require the use of cryoprotectants (CPAs) to either mitigate damage caused by ice formation, or to prevent ice formation altogether. The latter approach, known as vitrification, has demonstrated particular promise for cryopreservation of large three-dimensional systems such as tissues...

Cryopreservation of human red blood cells (RBCs) in the presence of 40% glycerol allows a shelf-life of 10 years, as opposed to only 6 weeks for refrigerated RBCs. Nonetheless, cryopreserved blood is rarely used in clinical therapy, in part because of the requirement for a time-consuming (~1 h) post-thaw wash process to remove glycerol before the p...

The protection conferred by penetrating cryoprotectants (CPAs) such as glycerol and dimethyl sulfoxide has made it possible to successfully cryopreserve a variety of cell types. However, it is well known that CPAs are not universally beneficial and exposure to CPAs can cause significant damage as a result of both cytotoxicity and osmotically-induce...

Cryopreservation of human red blood cells (RBCs) in the presence of 40% glycerol allows a shelf-life of 10 years, as opposed to only 6 weeks for refrigerated RBCs. Nonetheless, cryopreserved blood is rarely used in clinical therapy, in part because of the requirement for a time-consuming (∼1 h) post-thaw wash process to remove glycerol before the p...

Effective methods for long-term preservation of cord red blood cells (RBCs) are needed to ensure a readily available supply of RBCs to treat fetal and neonatal anemia. Cryopreservation is a potential long-term storage strategy for maintaining the quality of cord RBCs for the use in intrauterine and neonatal transfusion. However, during cryopreserva...

Simple and effective cryopreservation of human oocytes would have an enormous impact on the financial and ethical constraints of human assisted reproduction. Recently, studies have demonstrated the potential for cryopreservation in an ice-free glassy state by equilibrating oocytes with high concentrations of cryoprotectants (CPAs) and rapidly cooli...

Granulocytes are currently transfused as soon as possible after collection because they rapidly deteriorate after being removed from the body. This short shelf life complicates the logistics of granulocyte collection, banking and safety testing. Cryopreservation has the potential to significantly increase shelf life; however, cryopreservation of gr...

Loading of cryoprotectants into oocytes is an important step of the cryopreservation process, in which the cells are exposed to potentially damaging osmotic stresses and chemical toxicity. Thus, we investigated the use of physics-based mathematical optimization to guide design of cryoprotectant loading methods for mouse and human oocytes. We first...

The development of cryopreservation procedures for tissues has proven to be difficult in part because cells within tissue are more susceptible to intracellular ice formation (IIF) than are isolated cells. In particular, previous studies suggest that cell-cell interactions increase the likelihood of IIF by enabling propagation of ice between neighbo...

A mouse insulinoma (MIN6) strain in which connexin expression has been inhibited by antisense technology holds promise as an experimental model system for investigating the role of gap junctions in intercellular ice propagation. However, to properly interpret measurements of intracellular ice formation kinetics, the effects of cell dehydration on c...

Whereas storage of red blood cells (RBCs) in a refrigerated state allows a shelf life of a few weeks, RBCs frozen in 40% glycerol have a shelf life of 10 years. Despite the clear logistical advantages of frozen blood, it is not widely used in transfusion medicine. One of the main reasons is that existing post-thaw washing methods to remove glycerol...

Spray drying has the potential to enable storage of erythrocytes at room temperature in the dry state. The spray drying process involves atomization of a liquid into small droplets and drying of the droplets in a gas stream. In this short report, we focus on the atomization process. To decouple atomization from drying, erythrocyte suspensions were...

Calcein is an intracellular fluorescent probe that has been used as an indicator of cell volume in several previous studies. These studies have reported two different fluorescence responses depending on the optical setup used to collect the data: wide-field microscopy has resulted in a decrease in fluorescence upon cell shrinkage, whereas confocal...

Previously, we reported a new strategy for mathematical optimization of CPA addition and removal procedures which involves minimization of a toxicity cost function while constraining cell volumes within osmotic tolerance limits. The purpose of this study was to clearly define cellular osmotic tolerance limits of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial...

We previously measured the membrane water permeability of monolayers and suspensions of MIN6 mouse insulinoma cells at room temperature, and found that water transport was faster in monolayers. Here, we compare water transport kinetics in monolayers and suspensions over a range of temperatures for two different cell types, MIN6 cells and bovine pul...

Cryopreservation nearly universally depends on the equilibration of cells and tissues with high concentrations of permeating chemicals known as cryoprotective agents, or CPAs. Despite their protective properties, CPAs can cause damage as a result of osmotically-driven cell volume changes, as well as chemical toxicity. In this study, we have used pr...

Vitrification is a promising approach for cryopreservation of adherent cells because it allows complete avoidance of ice formation. However, high cryoprotectant (CPA) concentrations are required to prevent freezing, and exposure to high CPA concentrations increases the risk of osmotic and toxic damage. Although cell membrane transport modeling can...

The ability to successfully cryopreserve neural cells would represent an important advance with benefits to neural tissue engineering, neural transplantation, and neuroscience research. We have examined key factors responsible for damage to rat embryonic neural cells during cryopreservation using a two-step temperature profile, with an emphasis on...

Cell membrane permeability estimation using flow chamber experiments is susceptible to errors caused by non-negligible solution exchange time after switching of perfusate reservoirs. To prevent such confounding effects, we have undertaken theoretical and experimental analyses of the mass transport of osmotically active solutes. A diffusion-convecti...

Cryopreservation is a critical technology for the development of cell- and tissue-based products because it enables long-term preservation for purposes of stockpiling, quality control, and product distribution. The cryopreservation process requires that cells be subjected to extreme conditions, including high solute concentrations, low temperatures...

In a companion paper, we demonstrated that dynamic range limitations can confound measurement of the osmotically inactive volume using electrical sensing zone instruments (e.g., Coulter counters), and presented an improved parameter estimation method in which a lognormal function was fit to the cell volume distribution to allow extrapolation beyond...

Coincidence is a phenomenon that occurs when electrical sensing zone instruments fail to temporally resolve two or more particles passing through the sensing zone in close proximity. We have investigated the potential for coincidence errors to confound the estimation of cellular osmotic properties. A mathematical model was developed to predict the...

We have investigated the confounding effects of dynamic range limitations on measurement of the osmotically inactive volume using electrical sensing zone instruments (e.g., Coulter counters), and propose an improved approach to parameter estimation. The conventional approach for analysis of cell size distributions measured by such particle sizing i...

The objective of this research is to provide a novel approach to the problem of vascular anastomosis. The work subscribes to the idea that if we use a human protein that has adhesive properties, denatures by heat in an irreversible way and forms a semi-hard but flexible matter. Also belongs to the circulatory system, is liquid in its native state,...