X-Message-Number: 10139 Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 02:18:12 -0400 From: Paul Wakfer <> Subject: Vitrification and Ultrasound Report on Discussion from sci.cryonics In the middle of a discussion on the potential use of heavy water in vitrification to which Steve Harris was replying a poster <> asked about the potential of ultrasound for preventing ice formation and thus aiding vitrification. >>steve : what about ultrasound? has it been tried in conjunction with vitrification?>> To which Steve replied: >> Dunno. It's a good idea. A medline search on vitrification and ultrasound yields no hits. Pehaps it's time somebody with a cryomicroscope and a transducer looked at the effect of sound waves on ice crystal growth (hint, hint)>> To which dm_telvis replied: >>If I had a lab , I would do it! but i am but an undergrad... there should be low energy resonant frequencies that would largely just break up ice crystal lattices, as in the way microwaves are tuned to heat water and not proteins, carbs, etc... or they would char food...and ultrasound being mechanical energy, is gentle enough to hit fetuses with...anyway, email me steve, I have some refs. to share with you, if you want them...>> To which I replied: Since I answered this question somewhat negatively when it arose before on sci.cryonics, this time I sought expert opinion from two people with knowledge and direct working experience in vitrification. The following was sent by one of them: >>Agitation at sub-sonic (stirring) and audio frequencies seems to promote nucleation and freezing. In fact this is the principle that osmometers use to *cause* samples to freeze instead of supercool. It's possible that ultrasound may behave differently, but it seems that that approach should be put somewhere back in the queue of things to look at right now. Thanks for mentioning the idea again.>> The second expert replied: >>Claims for this approach have been made before, but they have not been substantiated. I did some work on using ultrasound to warm up vitrified organs. We were able to warm the organs at a reasonable and pretty uniform rate without obviously nucleating the test samples. This remains an open option for warming. Whether it can do anything pertinent to freezing is an open question.>> As the first expert said, using ultrasound is somewhere back in the queue of possible solution aids to perfecting damage-free vitrification of large tissue masses. What most people do not seem to realize is that the "space" of possible methods and aids to perfect suspended animation has any extremely large number of "dimensions", ie. there are a truly enormous number of compounds and methods which one can apply to solve the problem. Even though a few have been trying to attack this goal for decades, the problem has never been a lack of ideas which might work to achieve it. In the past as now, and for the foreseeable future, the problem remains one of a lack of resources of people, time and money to investigate more than a minuscule amount of that potential solution space. In such circumstances, the investigators and the monetary supporters must be the ones who choose the order of approaches to investigate. OTOH, the good news is that this enormous number of potential yet untested solutions suggests to me that the problem has an excellent chance of being solvable. Now if only I could convince more people that this research is essential for any realistic chance for their survival through cryonics, we might actually start bringing enough resources to bear on the problem to make a dent in that solution space ;-) Which brings me to the subject of the Hippocampal Slice Vitrification Project. This is now completely approved; permission has been give by the university medical center research institute host for their name to appear on the web site and in fund raising literature (so you may all now look at http://www.neurocryo.org to see where the project will be executed); some of the equipment is ordered; and we are close to hiring the experimentalist who will conduct the experiment under the supervision of the principal investigators one of which is Greg Fahy. We are now at the stage where the project will be held up for lack of funding from the Institute for Neural Cryobiology! I again ask all those who were so generous with their pledges to the Prometheus Project, to donate that pledge, or a good portion of it, toward this project which is the direct result of what Prometheus was attempting to accomplish. All donors with US or California taxable income can deduct the amount of their donation from that income. I have even offered a purchase option on my personal shares in 21CM to anyone donating $5,000 or more. (So far not a single extra donation has resulted from this offer. The only ones to want the offer, were the two people who already had donated over $5,000 - so I have personally lost value on the idea.) Please, please, please show that you really wish to live by sending some money to enable this first major initiative at damage-free vitrification of brain tissue. What more can I say? My next step must surely be to start phoning people, putting them "on the spot", and verbally twisting their arms. This is something which I deplore and I am sure that any of you who will be on the receiving end will dislike it also. Do I really have to resort to this? -- Paul -- Voice/Fax: 416-968-6291 Page: 800-805-2870 The Institute for Neural Cryobiology - http://neurocryo.org Perfected cryopreservation of Central Nervous System tissue for neuroscience research and medical repair of brain diseases Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10139