Ying C. Song's lab in the Life Sciences Business Development Center looks empty, but it's not. It's full of potential.

Dr. Song is the director of research for Xytex Research Inc., which became the second biotech company to move into the incubator at the Medical College of Georgia earlier this month. His work in how to safely freeze and rewarm tissue has officials excited.

"His research program is significant in that it raises the possibility of increasing the efficiency of cell and tissue transplantation," said Michael Gabridge, the center's director and the associate vice president for technology transfer and economic development at MCG.

"I have confidence that Dr. Song will develop a world-class laboratory of outstanding scientists nurtured by the academic heritage in reproductive medicine at the Medical College of Georgia," said Armand Karow, who founded the Xytex parent company for egg and sperm donation in the mid-1970s after his work at MCG.

Currently, there are a lot of limitations to preserving cells and tissues. Though there is a good way to freeze sperm, only about 5 percent of previously frozen eggs result in a pregnancy, Dr. Song said.

"It is a very low success rate," said Dr. Song, who also will be an adjunct professor of surgery of the urology section at MCG.

Then there is the long-standing problem of how to freeze organs to preserve them for transplant, Dr. Song said.

"After 50 years, nobody had done something about it," he said.

The problem is that the three-dimensional nature of the organs makes them difficult to freeze rapidly, he said.

While current cryopreservation techniques freeze tissue at 1 degree Celsius per minute, Dr. Song drops his into a chemical bath chilled to minus 130 degrees Celsius that cools tissue at 50 to 100 degrees a minute. He first dips the tissue into a high concentration of cryopreservatives that replace at least 50 percent of the water in the tissue. The process is called vitrification, which means to make it glasslike.

"You can achieve vitrification, which means you can avoid ice crystal formation," Dr. Song said.

It is those ice crystals that damage tissue and small blood vessels, he said. During rewarming, the tiny ice crystals clump together and disrupt tissue, he said. Though others have tried microwaves or magnetic heating, none of these approaches worked.

Dr. Song said he has a better idea: Be like a fish. The winter flounder can survive temperatures below freezing because it produces something scientists have dubbed "the antifreeze protein." The protein's structure is similar to water molecules and binds to them, preventing water molecules from clumping together and forming ice crystals during rewarming.

"Our approach is at the molecular level," he said.

While he has successfully frozen and rewarmed cells and cartilage, he is eager to try organs or to tackle the problem of preserving ovaries removed from child-bearing-age women who are undergoing cancer treatments and might want that function restored.

"That's a very hot topic in reproductive medicine," he said.

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.