X-Message-Number: 10202
Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 12:00:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug Skrecky <>
Subject: More on Suspended animation

From: Chuck Stewart <>
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic

(The kitty keeps an eye on that chicken heart in the glass jar on the
lab table... did it just move?... )

All in all, it looks like another very-market-driven biotech company.

It has one product it's trying to bring to market. 
It has two more variations of that product in development.

...And the later two touch closely on the subject of cryothermic
suspended animation (SA).

But it's a market-driven development.

Some possible/proposed forms of cryosurgery require the short-term
approximation of SA to work. And improved tranplant organ storage
methods will also need similiar techniques. So whoever devolps the
technology for both will, de facto, working around the concept of SA.

Whatever they may be shooting the breeze about in Sunday Times
interviews, their web page is all business.

----
Here are the relevant quotes from their page:
http://www.biotimeinc.com/
The below quoted material is from the BioTime site, and is used for the
"fair use" purposes.
----

Hextend is a straighforward synthetic plasma substitute.
It's in trials and under FDA consideration.

> Hextend is BioTime's proprietary hetastarch-based synthetic blood
> plasma volume expander, designed especially to treat hypovolemia in 
> surgery and trauma care where patients experience a large amount of 
> blood loss.

> To maximize market share, BioTime is aligning itself with leading

> pharmaceutical companies world wide, with comprehensive manufacturing > and 
sales capabilities, in order to produce, distribute and market 
> Hextend. 

----

Hetacool is the variant of Hextend that they used with the baboon
experiments.

> HetaCool has been used to completely replace the blood volume of

> hamsters, dogs and baboons at temperatures approaching freezing. Many > of 
these animal subjects survived long term after hypothermic blood 
> substitution with HetaCool. In these laboratory tests, the animals' 
> blood was removed and they were chilled for one to more than four 
> hours with deep body temperatures between 1oC and 10oC while chilled 
> HetaCool was oxygenated and slowly circulated. 

> If HetaCool can be used safely and effectively in low temperature
> surgery, the market size for the product could be substantial given 
> the large numbers of potential patients and the large volume (up to 
> fifty liters) of solution that would be used in each treatment. 

----

Hetafreeze is a further development along the same lines.

> In other laboratory experiments, BioTime scientists have shown that
> animals can be revived to consciousness after partial freezing with 
> their blood replaced by HetaFreeze. While this technology has not 
> developed to an extent that allows long term survival of the 

> laboratory subjects, it may have applications in the freezing and long > term 
storage of tissues such as blood vessels and skin. 

----

Ya gotta love capitalism :)

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10202