Is cryogenic storage of tissue cultures a thing yet?

Just curious. It's not something I have a need for, but this just came up in discussion with someone, and I'm now curious... tissue culture is such a thing now that you can buy kits on Amazon. So now I'm just wondering when people are going to start having their own private Svalbard vault in their basements?

It is a thing: Many cell lines (usually microbes and animal/human cells, less so plant cells) used for whatever research are backup stored in frozen state because quite often, cell lines shift after a certain number of cell divisions, they become old or differenciate and have to be replaced by new cells. What researchers do is buying "certified" batches at ATCC or another renowned company and do 2-3 passages and put the produced excess in cryostorage to have an early passage (passage doesn't equal cell division but how many times you change the culture bottle/Petri dish) to use once the first batch got old.
For short term storage (weeks to few months), a -80°C freezer is commonly used whereas long-term storage is done in liquid nitrogen. That's fairly expensive because nitrogen constantly evaporates to stay super cold and that's probably why private persons don't cryostore anything at home... well, for seeds, a normal freezer does fine for years .

The problem is, is that the plant material cannot have a chance to thaw out. And it must be vacuum sealed.

they of course need to be treated with DMSO and glycerol to prevent them from breaking.