Kryoprotektiva und Gefriermedien

Cryoprotective agents (CPAs)

Penetrating glycerol or the hygroscopic DMSO (dimethyl sulphoxide) are two commonly used cryoprotecting agents. They act by reducing the electrolyte concentration in the unfrozen medium at any temperature. DMSO is a popular choice, because of it low cost and moderate level of cytotoxicity. It is primarily used in slow freezing, while glycerol is more commonly applied in vitrification. Many freezing media come ready-to-use with pre-included CPAs. However, if you desire to make your own freezing media, you can use the glycerol and DMSO in stock for cell-biology.

Freezing media

The effects of osmotic shock that your cells experience during the freezing process, can be lessened by choosing the appropriate freezing medium for your cell line.

The addition of serum FBS (foetal bovine serum) to the freezing media may be helpful as it has shown to have protective effects. However, because sera are of animal origin, they are prone to contamination, such as from mycoplasma, and thus they are not GMP-compliant.

Alternatives can be found in serum-free freezing media. FREEZin1™ is a ready-to-use, chemically defined, universal serum-free freezing medium with DMSO. It is not affected by batch-to-batch fluctuations and can save you valuable time in the cell lab. At the same time, it has excellent performance in surface adhesion, cell survival rate and cell proliferation after thawing, making it suitable also for MSCs (mesenchymal stem cells).

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