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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Med. Technol.
Sec. Regenerative Technologies
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmedt.2024.1400615

Structural brain preservation: a potential bridge to future medical technologies

Provisionally accepted
Andrew T. McKenzie Andrew T. McKenzie 1*Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston 2,3Jordan S. Sparks Jordan S. Sparks 1*Oge Nnadi Oge Nnadi 4*John Smart John Smart 4*Keith Wiley Keith Wiley 4*Michael A. Cerullo Michael A. Cerullo 4Aschwin de Wolf Aschwin de Wolf 5*Francesca Minerva Francesca Minerva 6*Ramón Risco Ramón Risco 7,8George M. Church George M. Church 10,9*João Pedro de Magalhães João Pedro de Magalhães 11,12*Emil F. Kendziorra Emil F. Kendziorra 13*
  • 1 Apex Neuroscience, Salem, Illinois, United States
  • 2 School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  • 3 Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  • 4 Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
  • 5 Advanced Neural Biosciences, Portland, United States
  • 6 Department of Philosophy Piero Martinetti, University of Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
  • 7 Escuela Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain
  • 8 National Accelerators Center, CNA-CSIC, Seville, Spain
  • 9 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 10 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 11 Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
  • 12 The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, Humanities Division, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
  • 13 European Biostasis Foundation, Riehen, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    When faced with the prospect of death, some people would prefer a form of long-term preservation that may allow them to be restored to healthy life in the future, if technology ever develops to the point that this is feasible and humane. Some believe that we may have the capacity to perform this type of experimental preservation today -although it has never been proven -using contemporary methods to preserve the structure of the brain. The idea is that the morphomolecular organization of the brain encodes the information required for psychological properties such as personality and long-term memories. If these structures in the brain can be maintained intact over time, this could theoretically provide a bridge to access restorative technologies in the future. To consider this hypothesis, we first describe possible metrics that can be used to assess structural brain preservation quality. We next explore several possible methods to preserve structural information in the brain, including the traditional cryonics method of cryopreservation, as well as aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation and fluid preservation. We focus in-depth on fluid preservation, which relies on aldehyde fixation to induce chemical gel formation in a wide set of biomolecules and appears to be a cost-effective method. We describe two theoretical recovery technologies, alongside several of the ethical and legal complexities of brain preservation, all of which will require a prudent approach. We believe contemporary structural brain preservation methods have a non-negligible chance of allowing successful restoration in the future and that this deserves serious research efforts by the scientific community.

    Keywords: brain preservation, Biostasis, connectomics, Brain Perfusion, fluid preservation, Molecular nanotechnology

    Received: 18 Mar 2024; Accepted: 21 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 McKenzie, Zeleznikow-Johnston, Sparks, Nnadi, Smart, Wiley, Cerullo, de Wolf, Minerva, Risco, Church, Pedro de Magalhães and Kendziorra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Andrew T. McKenzie, Apex Neuroscience, Salem, Illinois, United States
    Jordan S. Sparks, Apex Neuroscience, Salem, Illinois, United States
    Oge Nnadi, Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
    John Smart, Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
    Keith Wiley, Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
    Aschwin de Wolf, Advanced Neural Biosciences, Portland, United States
    Francesca Minerva, Department of Philosophy Piero Martinetti, University of Milan, Milan, 20122, Lombardy, Italy
    George M. Church, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, United States
    João Pedro de Magalhães, Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, England, United Kingdom
    Emil F. Kendziorra, European Biostasis Foundation, Riehen, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.