Aurelia Song

When I started seriously looking into preservation techniques, it seemed to me that cryonics and neuroscience had opposite problems.

Neuroscientists could almost instantly preserve a brain using aldehydes, three, but didn't have a long-term strategy to keep that brain intact for a hundred years or more.

Cryonicists, meanwhile, struggled to avoid damaging a brain when they perfused it with cryoprotectants, but knew how to cool a perfused brain to vitrification temperature and keep it there indefinitely.

The obvious solution was to combine the two methods.

I could use fixation's remarkable ability to stabilize biological tissue, buying time to introduce cryoprotectants into the brain slowly enough to avoid the crushing damage caused by rapid dehydration.

Then, it would be safe to vitrify the brain for long-term preservation.

It took me about nine months to iron out all the details.

The most difficult part was figuring out how to get cryoprotectants past the blood-brain barrier.

It turned out that even very extended perfusion times, on their own, are not adequate to prevent dehydration.

Eventually, though, I got the technique to work on rabbits, that small mammal the model I was using.

Modifying the protocol to work for pigs took me a single day and worked on the first try.

I published the results of that research, Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation in Cryobiology, the first step towards winning the Brain Preservation Prize.

Subheading.

Independent verification by the Brain Preservation Foundation.

The next step towards the prize required direct verification by the BPF.

If you're interested, you can read their full methodology here.

At this time, I was working at 21st Century Medicine.

Ken Hayworth flew out to my location and joined me for a marathon three-day, dawn-to-dark session, during which I preserved, vitrified, rewarmed, and processed a rabbit and a pig.

Whenever Ken wasn't personally observing the brain samples, he secured them with tamper-proof stickers to preserve the chain of custody.

When I had finished preparing the samples for electron microscopy, Ken personally performed the cutting and imaging of the samples back at Janelia.