Cryonics refers to the low-temperature storage of the body (or at least the brain) at death to offer the chance that a more technologically capable future can restore that individual to life. It is an unknown chance, possibly a small and unknown chance, but cryonics is certainly a better option that the other end of life alternatives facing someone who is going to age to death before rejuvenation biotechnology and the medical control of aging becomes a reality. Cryonics remains a very good idea that should be far more widely used, significantly supported, and undergoing aggressive technological development to improve capabilities. But it is very far from being widely used and suffers from the same situation that afflicted the aging research community thirty years ago: a minority field with too little financial and popular support to generate the desired degree of progress.
Newfound enthusiasm for the development of means to treat aging has led to a vast (if very unevenly distributed) investment in the field, hundreds of companies working on all sorts of approaches. A tiny fraction of that enthusiasm for doing something to address age-related disease and mortality has spilled over into support for cryonics. Even that tiny fraction is proving to be transformative. I pick on Alcor as the example because I am signed up with Alcor, and therefore do pay more attention to what is going on there, but the field as a whole is showing progress. Europe has its own modern cryopreservation organization these days, Tomorrow.bio, their focus on customer service raising the bar for the community. Meanwhile Until Labs is working on making reversible vitrification of organs a commercial possibility, a best foot forward to generate further capital and legitimacy for cryonics.
After years of little visible progress and too little funding to improve on that situation, Alcor has of late acquired what is for a non-profit a sizable influx of capital. Enough to not just establish new research programs with new equipment, but to address look and feel and customer service priorities, such as a modernization of the website and creating a portal and modern relationship management system for their customers - and no doubt more under the hood than that. Alcor comes to the table with the DNA of decades of year to year struggle as a small non-profit serving a small community. Shedding some of those historical habits and culture will be necessary in order for a commercial industry of cryopreservation to emerge.
In a better world, this could have happened decades ago, driven by a broad popularist realization that cryopreservation to travel into a potentially far better future is the best of all options, turning an end into a hiatus. But it didn't. At least the first increments of such a sea change are happening now. A few excepts from a recent Alcor newsletter follow, for those who don't keep tabs on how this industry is modernizing.
Fundraising & Endowment: 2025 closed out as one of the stronger fundraising years in Alcor's history, including a major gift from the Rothblatt family - one of the largest individual donations Alcor has ever received. About 75% of donations came from people who hadn't given at that level before. The goal is to build an operational endowment similar to what exists for the Patient Care Trust, which is very healthy. The operations and administrative side, however, has historically struggled to keep pace. A comparable endowment would allow Alcor to focus on growth rather than making ends meet. Expect a significant fundraising initiative announcement in the near future.
First-Ever In-House Whole Body CT Scan: The team performed Alcor's first-ever in-house whole body CT scan. The scan itself went smoothly: they used the new ceiling trolley and hoist to transfer the patient from the perfusion table directly onto a radiotranslucent scanning tray, completed the scan in just a few minutes, transferred the patient back, and proceeded directly to cooldown. That patient is now in long-term storage. After everything it took to get here, it was well worth the wait. Being able to validate cryoprotectant distribution in-house and in real time opens up a lot of doors for quality assessment and research.
CT Scanning for Vitrification Assessment: we are putting the CT scanner to good use and have already started producing valuable data. Pre- and post-cooling scans show clear differences between frozen kidneys and vitrified kidneys. The next step: quantifying exactly how much ice forms in different regions using a newly purchased differential scanning calorimeter. This will let the team precisely correlate CT images with ice content - a tool that could become standard for assessing cryopreservation quality in organs and patients alike
Organ Cryopreservation: The team continues refining porcine kidney cryopreservation protocols. About 40% of kidneys show excellent vitrification with minimal ice formation. The other 60% show small ice crystals in the inner medulla - the part of the kidney that's hardest to perfuse.
Brain Slice Cultures: we are developing long-term brain slice cultures that can survive 2-3 weeks in a CO2 incubator. Using assays to measure metabolic activity, they've established a baseline comparing fresh tissue versus straight-frozen tissue. The goal: cryopreserve brain slices, rewarm them, and show maintained viability and functionality over time. This would be a significant contribution to the literature - evidence that brain tissue can remain alive and functional after proper cryopreservation. Additional human brain tissue experiments are also in the works, with a neurosurgery partnership nearly finalized.
New Project: Antifreeze Protein Gene Integration: A particularly exciting update is that we are developing a project to integrate antifreeze protein genes directly into cells via gene therapy. The idea is that if cells can produce their own antifreeze proteins internally, they might survive freezing and thawing better without needing external cryoprotectants. This is early-stage - they're still screening candidate proteins from fish, beetles, and other organisms. Potential applications include improving CAR-T cell therapy, which could be relevant for both cryonics and mainstream medicine.
View the full article at FightAging
