Joy Kong, MD, explains why doctors shouldn't thaw stem cells by hand. Rolling vials in your palm takes about 5 minutes, but a 37°C water bath does it in roughly 3 minutes. Lingering in the danger zone around -59°C lets ice crystals form and puncture cell membranes, killing them.
37°C
About five minutes
Close to -59°C
There are also some technical mistakes I've seen. One is that doctors are thawing the cells out by putting the cells in their hand, putting the vials in their hand and they think by rolling around and that will gradually thaw out. Yes, it takes about five minutes. It does thaw the cells out, but it's slower. And the problem with that in comparison to using a 37 degree water bath is that the water bath will thaw the cells out very fast. The cells are thawed out probably in 60% of the time. When you use rate is not very effective. The longer you let the cells stay in that thawing process, you're allowing them to stay at the temperature that's close around -59. And that's when crystals can form. So these cells can form crystals and those crystals can puncture the cell walls and then you've got dead cells. So you want to minimize the time the cells are staying in that limbo. You want to thaw them out as fast as possible.
