X-Message-Number: 24460 Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 10:40:37 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: DMSO as a cryoprotectant For Doug Skrecky: Unfortunately DMSO has been thoroughly investigated for a long time as a cryoprotectant and doesn't work as well as some others. I am not engaged in studying cryoprotectants, I'm just reporting what I've read. Greg Fahy, who counts as an authority on this subject, is probably much too busy with vitrification to reply to your message. Until Fahy and others started to get better solutions, glycerol turned out to be superior. Early suspensions were actually done with DMSO. Now we have solutions better than glycerol. As I understand it, there is a wide choice of possible solutions; Fahy and Wowk have come up with some simple tests which can be applied to a solution to see if it's at least a candidate for further work. As you can guess, such tests are quite valuable just because many possible choices exist. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24460