Modelling the Cryopreservation Process of a Suspension of Cells: The Effect of a Size-Distributed Cell Population - Computational Modeling in Tissue Engineering - page 139

Modelling the Cryopreservation Process
of a Suspension of Cells: The Effect
of a Size-Distributed Cell Population
Alberto Cincotti and Sarah Fadda
Abstract Cryopreservation of biological material is a crucial step of tissue
engineering, but biological material can be damaged by the cryopreservation
process itself. Depending on some bio-physical properties that change from cell to
cell lineages, an optimum cryopreservation protocol needs to be identified for any
cell type to maximise post-thaw cell viability. Since a prohibitively large set
of operating conditions has to be determined to avoid the principal origins of
cell damage (i.e., ice formation and solution injuries), mathematical modelling
represents a valuable alternative to experimental optimisation. The theoretical
analysis traditionally adopted for the cryopreservation of a cell suspension
addresses only a single, average cell size and ascribes the experimental evidence of
different ice formation temperatures to statistical variations. In this chapter our
efforts to develop a novel mathematical model based on the population balance
approach that comprehensively takes into account the size distribution of a cell
population are reviewed. According to this novel approach, a sound explanation
for the experimental evidence of different ice formation temperatures may now be
given by adopting a fully deterministic criterion based on the size distribution of
the cell population. In this regard, the proposed model represents a clear novelty
for the cryopreservation field and provides an original perspective to interpret
system behaviour as experimentally measured so far. First our efforts to
successfully validate the proposed model by comparison with suitable experi-
mental data taken from the literature are reported. Then, in absence of suitable
experimental data, the model is used to theoretically investigate system behaviour
A. Cincotti ( & ) S. Fadda
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Chimica e dei Materiali,
Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
e-mail: [e-mail]
S. Fadda
e-mail: [e-mail]