The company Until, led by Laura Deming, is pursuing reversible cryopreservation with the long-term goal of whole-body medical hibernation to pause time for patients with untreatable diseases.
As a pragmatic first step, Until is focused on developing technology to cryopreserve individual human organs, aiming to revolutionize the organ transplant industry by eliminating time constraints.
The core scientific challenge is vitrification: cooling tissue below -130°C fast enough to prevent the formation of damaging ice crystals, a problem that can be addressed through a combination of biological and engineering solutions.
While the technology has been proven at a small scale (e.g., human embryos preserved for 30+ years), scaling it to complex organs and eventually the whole body, particularly the brain, remains the primary obstacle.
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Concerns Raised
Scaling the technology from small tissues (like embryos) to complex, vascularized organs is a major engineering and biological hurdle.
The brain's tolerance for the cryopreservation and rewarming process is the biggest long-term unknown for whole-body applications.
The toxicity of cryoprotectant agents at the concentrations needed for large tissues remains a significant challenge.
Opportunities Identified
Completely transforming the organ transplant system by eliminating the time-based constraints on organ viability and matching.
Enabling medical hibernation for patients with terminal diseases, providing a bridge to future cures.
Developing foundational technology with applications in tissue engineering, drug discovery, and potentially long-duration space travel.