Monday: Freezing humans

Morning Change Makers,

Today we delve into the forefront of modern science: cryopreservation. Can we freeze humans and then bring them back a century later?

Read on,
Will

What does the world look like in 100 years time?

What cures have been found for diseases we currently believe to be incurable? A vaccine for cancer? A pill that prevents visible ageing? 

We might think these things to be far-fetched, but if you had told people in the 1920s that there was mould (penicillin) growing on a tree that would prevent most types of bacterial infection they would have probably laughed you out of the room.

We’re bad at predicting what we can achieve/discover over the long-term.

However, one thing we can be sure of is technology and specifically medicine, is only going to get better. We have no idea by how much, but it will improve!

But that doesn’t really help us today. If you have an incurable condition today, saying a doctor will be able to cure it in 100 years is not only unhelpful it is actually rather depressing. If only you existed at a different time….

But maybe not. 

A company called Cradle was launched this week (read about them here) that believes they may be able to reversibly cryopreserve living tissue - or in layman’s terms, they can freeze biological organisms and bring them back as they were…alive.

This isn’t a novel idea. Scientists from the 1930s were experimenting with freezing and reviving living cells and tissues. They all, however, ran into the same issue: ice.

When you freeze something ice crystals form where any water is present. Which, in the human body, is pretty much everywhere.

Watch this to see why we haven’t been able to freeze people and bring them back so far.

And that is where the big breakthrough happened that has allowed Cradle to raise $48m and potentially build a significant company.

Through a method called perfusion, the water in organisms is able to be transferred to be a “cryoprotectant molecule” - aka a substance that doesn’t crystallise.

So when the tissue is thawed it doesn’t turn into goo.

Cradle has made one significant leap. They took a chunk of brain tissue from a rat, cryopreserved (froze) it, thawed it and then managed to detect electrical activity, demonstrating their ability to preserve the functional integrity of delicate brain cells.

If it can work on a rat’s brain, why can’t it work on a full human body?

What the world could look like in 10 years

There are some significant short-term benefits to this. One of the biggest problems in studying the human brain right now is that as soon as it’s cut off from its oxygen supply, it degrades at a rapid speed meaning scientists don’t have the time to study it. The ability to preserve it over a longer time period gives scientists ample time to conduct their research.

Much like how brains degrade, so do other organs. Every year, thousands of organs are rejected as they can’t be transferred fast enough. Oftentimes there is a fight against time for the donor’s organs to be received by the recipient. By preserving organs through Cradle’s method, many more people in need of a transplant would receive it.

What the world could look like in 50 years

If you Zoom out a little, it’s plausible that reversible cryopreservation could give people “another shot” at life.

If someone were to be diagnosed with an incurable, terminal, condition they could be given a choice: do what humans have done for our entire history and deal with it the best you can with the current technologies at your disposal and ultimately succumb to it, or cryopreserve your body with a ‘note’ to be awoken when a cure becomes available for your specific condition (10 years? 50 years? 100 years later?)

With the level of understanding and intelligence we are about to obtain, perhaps the ability to give your body a bit more time might just be the answer a lot of people would choose.

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