About the Authors

José Paulo Rodrigues dos Santos

Contributed equally to this work with: José Paulo Rodrigues dos Santos, Nadia X. Montazeri

Roles Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft

Affiliations Tomorrow Biostasis, Berlin, Germany, FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Aachen, Germany

Nadia X. Montazeri

Contributed equally to this work with: José Paulo Rodrigues dos Santos, Nadia X. Montazeri

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Tomorrow Biostasis, Berlin, Germany

Tijana Perović

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Tomorrow Biostasis, Berlin, Germany

Emil F. Kendziorra

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

emil.kendziorra@ebf.foundation

Affiliations Tomorrow Biostasis, Berlin, Germany, European Biostasis Foundation, Riehen, Canton of Basel-Stadt, Switzerland

Competing Interests

TP is an employee of Tomorrow Biostasis GmbH. EK is a shareholder and CEO of Tomorrow Biostasis GmbH, a biostasis provider, President of the Board of the European Biostasis Foundation, a non-profit research foundation, a shareholder and director at Oxford Cryotechnology, Inc., a cryopreservation research organization, and a board member at CryoDAO, a Swiss research association. There are no patents or products in development associated with this research to declare. Tomorrow Biostasis provides its clients with already marketed products (human cryopreservation), which are tangentially related to the topic of the paper, but the paper offers no direct benefit to the product. Tomorrow Biostasis markets human cryopreservation services and holds intellectual property related to cryopreservation technology. The company had no role in the study’s design, execution, analysis, or publication. The survey was anonymous and conducted independently of the company’s customer base, and no company marketing materials were used in recruitment. The authors EK and TP confirm that their affiliation does not alter their adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.