I filmed a nearly-two-hour podcast with Hunter Davis, the CSO and cofounder (alongside Laura Deming) of Until Labs, a biotech startup trying to build reversible, organ-scale cryopreservation. There’s been no shortage of podcasts on this topic, but most of them drift into speculation, philosophy, or the usual “uploading someday maybe” futurism. I don't mind those topics, but I have been wanting a more rigorous treatment of the whole subject, something that treats cryopreservation with the same rigor as you'd treat a discussion over, say, antibody production. In the end, I just decided to make it myself, and I'm happy Hunter joined me for it!

We talk about the technical details behind Until Labs' September 2024 progress report on neural-slice vitrification and rewarming; how they quantify tissue damage in their early kidney cryopreservation attempts; the physics that make rewarming arguably harder than freezing; and even a bit on what the economics of real-world organ cryopreservation might look like.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/xaqwPd3ujHg
Substack + Transcript: https://www.owlposting.com/p/bringing-organ-scale-cryopreservation
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/23g2lR7dWl8NXUn893KMgv?si=5628cd0e56184130
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bringing-organ-scale-cryopreservation-into-existence/id1758545538?i=1000738128994
 

Timestamps here just in case it helps you assess whether this is at all interesting to you:

[00:00:00] Clips
[00:01:50] Introduction
[00:05:00] Why don’t we have reversible cryopreservation today?
[00:07:05] Why is freezing necessary at all for preservation?
[00:08:23] Let’s discuss cryoprotectant agents
[00:14:09] Until Lab’s 2024 progress report on neural tissue cryopreservation
[00:20:28] How do you measure cryopreserved tissue damage?
[00:22:34] Translation across species
[00:26:04] Why was the cryopreservation storage time so short in the progress report?
[00:30:47] Nuances of loading cryoprotectants into tissue
[00:37:03] Let’s discuss rewarming
[00:43:02] What scientific problems amongst vitrification and rewarming keep you up at night?
[00:45:58] Why are there so few cryoprotectants?
[00:48:11] How can you improve rewarming capabilities?
[00:53:03] What are the experimental costs of running cryopreservation studies?
[00:57:49] What happens to the cryoprotectants and iron oxide nanoparticles after the organ has been thawed?
[01:01:34] Cryopreservation and immune response
[01:03:25] How do you filter through the cryopreservation literature
[01:05:54] How much is molecular simulation used at Until Labs?
[01:10:04] What are the (expected) economics of Until Labs?
[01:14:49] How much does cryopreservation practically solve the organ shortage problem?
[01:17:04] Synergy between xenotransplantation and cryopreservation
[01:21:12] How much will the final cryopreservation protocol likely cost?
[01:21:58] Who ends up paying for this?
[01:23:28] What was it like to raise a Series A on such an unorthodox thesis?
[01:27:49] What are common misconceptions people have about cryopreservation?
[01:29:58] The beginnings of Until Labs
[01:34:07] What expertise is hardest to recruit for?
[01:39:27] What personality type do you most value when hiring?
[01:44:17] Why work in cryopreservation as opposed to anything else?
[01:46:26] Until Lab’s competitors
[01:49:30] What would an alternative universe version of Hunter worked on?
[01:51:33] What would you do with $100M?