August 2018: Dr. Han and His Group Won a Coulter Translational Research Partnership Award for Rat Heart Cryopreservation.

Dr. Han as the clinical PI collaborating with Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center and College of Engineering at the University of Missouri won a Coulter Translational Research Partnership award to develop a novel organ freezing medium that enables one-week storage of organs at -20°C (i.e. in regular lab freezer), using rat hearts as the model. If this technology can be translated to human hearts, it will potentially solve the severe management issues caused by the relatively short shelf-life of donor hearts (4-6 hour in hypothermia) and saves thousands of lives in the USA alone each year.