Cryobanking: the brave new world of biobanking and specimen cryopreservation

Martin H Bluth

Department of Pathology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit Medical Center, Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit, MI, USA

The layperson’s depiction of people preservation often conjures up nefarious iterations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel, The Body Snatchers, or Ira Levin’s thriller, The Boys from Brazil, where maintenance of human composition is employed for perpetuation of ill repute. Recent illustrations of animal preservation-reanimation gone wrong, such as the Jurassic Park films, further echoed such concerns. In contrast, during the 1980s, the advent of cloning morphed with cryopreservation to furnish jocularity in the form of many an Arnold Schwarzenegger film (Twins, Junior). The late 1980s and early 1990s also demonstrated a greater degree of reality-based cryopreservation, public acceptance, and clinical application in the form of cord blood-banking, stem cell transplantation, and in-situ fertilization technologies, thus positively affecting both the biobanking image and human health.¹