Scientists at the Allen Institute have developed a new approach that keeps blood cells alive in deep freeze, with this new technique promising to expand the reach of cutting-edge single-cell technologies to underserved populations.
The new approach, called CryoSCAPE, developed by researchers at the Allen Institute for Immunology, a division of the Allen Institute, aims to stabilise blood samples at the point of collection. The method uses a simple chemical mixture, pre-packaged in a small tube, to put blood into a type of suspended animation protecting it from damage during freezing and preserving these delicate molecules in their natural state.
This new scalable immune profiling technology is described in a recently published study in the Journal of Translational Medicine.
“Virtually all clinical trials run by biopharmaceutical companies will collect blood at one site, but then they have to ship the blood overnight to a centralised processing site,” said Peter Skene PhD, Director of High Resolution Translational Immunology at the Allen Institute for Immunology, who is one of the developers of the new approach. “We wanted to solve this problem by developing a methodology that allows immediate blood stabilisation at the bedside.”
The approach aims to broaden the reach of single-cell technologies, which capture the exact molecular composition of thousands or more of a patient’s individual cells, one cell at a time. As these single-cell methods increase in use in the research world and ultimately make their way to clinical use, this blood stabilisation technique could help increase the accuracy of experimental results and bring single-cell methods to research in diverse human populations.
The most common of the emerging single-cell technologies is known as single-cell RNA sequencing, a technique that reads out the genes switched on or off in a cell by capturing information about each individual cell’s full suite of RNA molecules. RNA is particularly changeable: the Allen Institute team found that just six hours after blood collection, RNA sequencing data are completely different from those in cells analysed right after a blood draw. But the new way of stabilising blood could be useful for other applications too, its creators say, because it keeps the cells alive and close to their natural state in the body.
The Allen Institute team’s approach also scales up the single-cell experiments to the point that they can now process hundreds of blood samples at once. The technology could be used to broaden the reach of immunology studies at the Allen Institute and elsewhere, Skene said. The method would lower the barriers to participating in research studies because blood could be drawn at neighbourhood clinics or pop-up sites, eliminating the need for volunteers to travel to a research laboratory. Skene and his colleagues hope these lowered barriers could lead to increased enrolment of members of underserved communities in research studies and clinical trials. The team also plans to use the approach to help streamline and expand clinical trials conducted by biopharmaceutical companies, those that typically need to ship blood samples to a centralised laboratory for analysis.
- Heubeck AT, Phalen C, Kaul N, et al. CryoSCAPE: Scalable immune profiling using cryopreserved whole blood for multi-omic single cell and functional assays. J Transl Med. 2025;23(1):5. Published 2025 Jan 3. doi:10.1186/s12967-024-06010-z