How Until is Engineering Away Time in Organ Transplants | Laura Deming
In a Nutshell
Until co-founder and CEO Laura Deming outlines the company's mission to achieve reversible whole-body cryopreservation for medical hibernation, starting with near-term reversible cryopreservation of human organs to eliminate transplant timing constraints—organs currently expire quickly, forcing rushed logistics like private jets and patient "house arrest" near centers. Key challenges include preventing damaging ice formation by vitrifying tissues below -30°C using cryoprotectants, with proven successes in embryos (30+ years viable) and rabbit kidneys (functional post-rewarm and transplant). This "freezes time" for critical care, enabling patients to await cures for fast-evolving diseases like metastatic melanoma, transforming inefficient matching and scheduling paradigms.
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What if you could take someone on their deathbed and hibernate them until a critical cure for their disease comes online? The ability to freeze time for humans. Until's long-term goal is reversible whole body cryopreservation for medical hibernation. In the near term, they focus on reversibly cryopreserving single human organs to help transplant patients get organs more efficiently. Making time not a variable changes the whole paradigm. The problem in cryopreservation speaks for itself.
Water expands when it forms ice, which is hard for tissue to take without substantial damage. There's a temperature below which ice formation stops happening. If you can get below that without ice formation, you're good. Human tissue, including embryos, is already reversibly cryopreserved for very long periods—kids have been cryopreserved as tiny embryos for 30 years. The main question is scaling up.
Welcome to No Priors with Laura Deming, previously founder of the Longevity Fund, now co-founder and CEO of Until. Discussion on progressing reversible cryopreservation: beginning with human organs, to small animals, hopefully to whole body. Sounds like science fiction, but covers scientific challenges, current status, and implications.
Laura's wished-for technologies included telepathy, upload, and freezing time for humans. She didn't think freezing time was workable, but it is.
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