Chemical adjuvant cryosurgery with antifreeze proteins.

Background And Objectives: Imaging monitored cryosurgery is emerging as an important minimally invasive surgical technique for treatment of cancer. Although imaging allows excellent control over the process of freezing itself, recent studies show that at high subzero temperatures cells survive freezing. Antifreeze proteins (AFP) are chemical compounds that modify ice crystals to needle-like shapes that can destroy cells in cellular suspensions.

Effect of antifreeze proteins on frozen primary prostatic adenocarcinoma cells.

Objectives: Recent studies show that prostate adenocarcinoma cells can survive cryosurgery and that cell destruction depends on the specific thermal parameters used during freezing. The goal of this preliminary study is to determine whether certain chemical compounds, known as antifreeze proteins, can induce complete human primary prostatic adenocarcinoma cell destruction by freezing, regardless of the thermal parameters used. The study also examines the mechanism by which antifreeze proteins bring about cell destruction.

Alveolar lining layer is thin and continuous: low-temperature scanning electron microscopy of rat lung.

The low-temperature electron microscope, which preserves aqueous structures as solid water at liquid nitrogen temperature, was used to image the alveolar lining layer, including surfactant and its aqueous subphase, of air-filled lungs frozen in anesthetized rats at 15-cmH2O transpulmonary pressure. Lining layer thickness was measured on cross fractures of walls of the outermost subpleural alveoli that could be solidified with metal mirror cryofixation at rates sufficient to limit ice crystal growth to 10 nm and prevent appreciable water movement. The thickness of the liquid layer averaged 0.