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Recovery of haemolytic plaque-forming cells after freeze drying

Abstract

FREEZE drying is generally accepted as the most convenient and often the best method for the preservation of bacteria and viruses. With mammalian cells, the situation is different and cells such as lymphocytes have to be stored in liquid nitrogen, a method that is cumbersome and inconvenient and which makes transport of such cells particularly difficult. Up to the present, there has to our knowledge been only a single report of successful recovery of function following rehydration of a freeze dried nucleated mammalian cell. This was by Meryman and Kafig in 19591 using spermatozoa, but neither they2 nor other workers3 have been able to repeat this work. Freeze drying of non-nucleated mammalian cells, such as erythrocytes, has been more successful, however, and both Meryman4 and Greaves3 have reported the lyophilisation of small numbers of these cells.

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DAMJANOVIC, V., EDWARDS, D. & THOMAS, D. Recovery of haemolytic plaque-forming cells after freeze drying. Nature 253, 116–119 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1038/253116a0

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