Cryonics is controversial, and many would ask why preserving animals this way in the first place. Yet there are also those who believe in science and hope that the near future will see technologies to bring deceased people and animals back to life. KrioRus unites scientists and researchers performing both cryopreservation of the whole body and neuropreservation (brain preservation). For you to have a clone of your pet it is only necessary to preserve their DNA for the future.
On the night of November, 16 another cryopreservation of an animal took place - this time that was a dog named Legenda. That was an unconventional operation of undoubtful importance for our future experiments. Its special feature was size of the animal - usually they are smaller than people, but this time the dog weighed like an adult human - 70 kilos, with its thick hair also preventing cooling.
It is due to thick hair that сryopreservation of dogs is more complicated than that of humans. This time KrioRus staff that performed the procedures gained truly important and useful experience, because our last animal patient was a really large dog of more than 70 kilos weight, with thick hair and considerable body capacity. It hardly fitted onto a standard gurney usually used as a table for operations. That is why cooling the animal was a special challenge.
However, experienced members of KrioRus that performed perfusion handled all the problems. To cool the dog’s head they used an ice container usually used with humans. Head cooling should always be most comprehensive as preserving neural connections is the most important part of the procedure. For deeper cooling ice was mixed with salt.
The dog’s body was covered with ice bags and cold accumulators. Also, extra thermoelectric cooling was used - a thermocouple was inserted into a nostril, and the dog’s body temperature dropped to 8 degrees centigrade. In general, the perfusion that took about 10 hours after the dog arrived was successful. It lasted from 8 p.m. to around 6 or 7 a.m. With all stages completed as planned, the dog was sent to the cryogenic storage.
It is the 9th dog and the 22nd animal to have been preserved at KrioRus. Considering this experience, in the future we suppose we will need to make a special operation table for large animals or use special supports for operations on cows available now at Tver State Agricultural Academy.
The dog’s preservation procedures were performed by Ivan Stepin, Nata Radek, Aleksey Samykin, Sergey Yefratov and Aleksandr Akhvlediani led by the company’s scientific director Igor Artyukhov, with our special thanks extended to Sasha Melanchenko for administrative and material support and Dmitry Lukyanov who, while shooting a video, also managed to make high-quality professional pictures for us.
Preserving your pet is a good option if your dog is of rare breed or has some unique features, or if you believe that soon we will be able to master the technology of reversible cryopreservation so that you can meet your favorite pet in the future.
If your pet has already died and you want us to perform perfusion with cryoprotectants, move your pet to a fridge as soon as possible. If it doesn’t fit into the fridge, try to find a bath or a pool big enough and put ice there to surround your pet with ice water so that it cools and stays in water as cold as possible. Ice water warms up faster than ice cubes or ice bags, so it is important to add ice into water all the time.
If you put your pet into a freezer, we will not be able to make perfusion with cryoprotectants because ice formation has already damaged pet’s blood vessels. That is why before cryopreservation the animal should be stored at 2-8 degrees centigrade. In some cases owners decide to put their pet down (perform euthanasia) in a veterinary clinic to reduce time that the pet would spend at ice temperature before cryopreservation.
Today cryonics uses low temperatures to improve chances of humans before what is now considered clinical death. Maybe in the near future it will help to prevent it?..
There has already been an experiment where cryoprotectants were applied to the organs removed from a donor animal which were then cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature, warmed up again and implanted back to the animal where they operated properly. Thus, we can say that in general reversible cryopreservation should be possible for humans as well.
Of course, there are several challenges: firstly, cryoprotectants used today are toxic. It is necessary to either eliminate this toxicity or develop less toxic cryoprotectants.
Second problem to consider is unequal cooling which is the reason of stress fractures. Humans are quite massive and have considerable thermal inertia. When cooled, human tissues vitrify, but they cool unequally, and that causes thermal stress resulting in cracking, like that of ice in water. This cracking causes significant tissue damages.
About a year ago researchers from 21st Century Medicine successfully preserved an entire brain of a mammal for the first time. This outstanding experiment received the award granted by the Brain Preservation Foundation.
The preserved brain belonged to a rabbit, and using an innovative technique called aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC), the researched managed to return the animal’s brain into near-perfect condition.
“Using a combination of ultrafast chemical fixation and cryogenic storage, it is the first demonstration that near perfect, long-term structural preservation of an intact mammalian brain is achievable”, the Brain Preservation Foundation states in its news release.
The team led by recent graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Robert McIntyre filled the vascular system of the rabbit brain with chemicals that prevent decay and allow it to be cooled to -211 degrees Fahrenheit. When the brain thawed, all its synapses, cell membranes and intracellular structures were found to be fully intact.
“Every neuron and synapse looks beautifully preserved across the entire brain,” the president of BPF Kenneth Hayworth said. Current methods of cryopreservation are not perfect - they result in dehydration and destruction of neural connections. As brain of a rabbit can already be revived today, we are confident that further experiments and new cryoprotectants will make it possible to revive human brain preserving all neural connections that form one’s personal identity.
The same group of researchers tested their ASC preservation technique on a larger brain of a pig which is more like a human one, and are now awaiting for the results of this experiment. Their study was recently published in Cryobiology. Source: http://www.natureworldnews.com
Alongside its major activities and cryopreservation, KrioRus puts a lot of time and effort into ICO CryoGen project - a chance for anyone to prolong life with revolutionary cryogenic technology. Recently our work drew the attention of The Telegraph from Britain which published an article about KrioRus raising investment to build modern cryogenic depositary in Switzerland. Now we are negotiating with the companies that have real estate suitable for the future cryogenic storage.
If you think about radical life prolongation, making a contract on cryopreservation is what you need to do now. The right moment is today as during Pre-ICO you have a 30% discount on cryopreservation. For more details please visit our official website.
