BIO

Grace Lin is a sophomore in Biomedical Engineering. Since she was young, she had a growing interest in medicine. Currently, she aspires to become a researcher in the medical field.

Temperature Profile of Prefilled Syringe Components

Abstract

Deep cold storage is a process that preserves biological constructs by cooling specimens to a very low temperature. The low temperature allows us to preserve the fine structure of the cells compared to slow freezing. Recently it has been widely used in the storage of mRNA vaccines, due to their contents, they must be stored and transported at temperatures as low as -80°C. Currently, the main type of vessel to transport and store medicine is a multi-dose jar. These jars, once thawed, cannot be refrozen easily which causes the leftover doses to be wasted. One of the potential dose-sparing strategies is prefilled syringes (PFS), where the syringes are filled with one dose in the production process and the syringe acts as the transport container. There is a need in understanding how each component of the PFS acts while temperatures drop to and maintain deep cold storage temperatures. The temperature of positions of interest within the prefilled syringes was measured and visually monitored to track the physical behaviors of multiple systems. The collected data will allow us to form a temperature profile for each component and help us to model a system of PFS, being transported and stored in deep cold storage.

Keywords: Medicine, Cryopreservation, Deep Cold Storage