Cooling of a vial in a snapfreezing device without using sacrificial cryogens

A fresh and frozen high-quality patient bio-sample is required in molecular medicine for the identification of disease-associated mechanism at molecular levels. A common cooling procedure is immersing the tissue enclosed in a vial in a coolant such as liquid nitrogen. This procedure is not user friendly and is laborious as reducing the lag time from excision time to freezing depends on the logistic organizational structure within a hospital. Moreover snapfreezing must be done as soon as possible after tissue excision to preserve the tissue quality for molecular tests. Herein, we report an electrically powered snap freezing device as an alternative to quenching the vial in liquid nitrogen and therefore can be used directly at the location where the tissue is acquired. This device also facilitates the study of the effect of freezing conditions on the various molecular processes in the samples. Cooling experiments of a vial in the snap freezing device show that the cooling rates similar to or faster than quenching in liquid nitrogen are feasible. We performed experiments with several set point conditions and compared the results with a mathematical model.