Cell Monolayer Storage Paper Published
Most cell biology, biomaterials and associated research is conducted on cells attached to tissue culture plastic in multiwell plates - such as high throughput drug discovery and toxicity, to viral plaque assays. However, there is a disconnect that the cells are stored frozen in suspension, not in the format ‘ready to use’. This is because conventional cryoprotectants do not protect the cells when in monolayer format.
The GibsonGroup, and UoW Spin-Out Cryologyx have worked together to solve this problem using macromolecular cryoprotectants. In this later paper, the team demonstrate reproducible and robust recovery of cell monolayers out of the freezer. This is shown for common cell lines, including HepG2 and Caco-2, commonly used in drug screening. This is a revolutionary technology as it shows researchers could stop wasting time culturing cells, and just order them, remove from freezer and within 24 hours begin data collection with no of the traditional culturing steps. Cryologyx are deploying these findings to commercialise assay ready cells, and trial plates are available!
Read the abstract below, or the full paper here
Cell monolayers underpin the discovery and screening of new drugs and allow for fundamental studies of cell biology and disease. However, current cryopreservation technologies do not allow cells to be stored frozen while attached to tissue culture plastic. Hence, cells must be thawed from suspension, cultured for several days or weeks, and finally transferred into multiwell plates for the desired application. This inefficient process consumes significant time handling cells, rather than conducting biomedical research or other value-adding activities. Here, we demonstrate that a synthetic macromolecular cryoprotectant enables the routine, reproducible, and robust cryopreservation of biomedically important cell monolayers, within industry-standard tissue culture multiwell plates. The cells are simply thawed with media and placed in an incubator ready to use within 24 h.
Post-thaw cell recovery values were >80% across three cell lines with low well-to-well variance. The cryopreserved cells retained healthy morphology, membrane integrity, proliferative capacity, and metabolic activity; showed marginal increases in apoptotic cells; and responded well to a toxicological challenge using doxorubicin. These discoveries confirm that the cells are “assay-ready” 24 h after thaw. Overall, we show that macromolecular cryoprotectants can address a long-standing cryobiological challenge and offers the potential to transform routine cell culture for biomedical discovery.
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society