GENERAL INFORMATION

The place of organization of such an institution, specializing in the field of cryobiology and cryomedicine was not at random chosen. Kharkov is the largest industrial and scientific center in the Ukraine and pos sesses the world known schools of physicists, mathematicians, biologists, medical workers, chemists and highly skilled engineers and designers.

Organization of the Institute was strongly initiated by B.I. Verkin, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine and N.S. Pushkar, MD, corresponding-member of the National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine.

The main scientific trend of the Institute was the investigation of the mechanisms of cryoinjury, cryoprotection and reparation of biological systems of various organization levels (molecular, cellular, tissue, organ), of peculiar features of cold injury and self-assembly of cells at molecular level, which made it possible to scientifically substantiate synthesis of new types of protective compounds for improving the technology of low temperature freezing and long-term storage of biological objects of various origin, i.e. to establish highly effective cryobanks of cells, seeds, plants, strains of microorganisms, different tissues and organs, used in medical practice, biology and agriculture.

An important task became also the investigation of the mechanisms of the organism resistance during their cold adaptation under natural (poikilothermal, hibernating animals) and artificial conditions (homoiothermal animals, human being), which enabled to elucidate the mechanisms of reversible rearrangement of the system of genetic information and metabolic paths of cold-resistant organisms, capable to long-term surviving under extreme climatic condi tions with the body, temperature close to 0C, and hypometabolism state.

The Institute develops as a complex R&D institution, where in close cooperation physicists and biophysicists, chemists and biochemists, mathematicians and engineers are working together with biologists and medical workers. At the beginning the staff consisted of 47 workers (from them 3 doctors of science), while currently the Institute employs as much as 321 people, among them 25 Dr.Sc. and 109 Ph.D.