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Nanomedicine and Cryonics

Ralph C. Merkle

Distinguished Professor of Computing

Georgia Tech College of Computing

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Health, wealth and atoms

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Arranging atoms

• Flexibility• Precision• Cost

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Ultimate limits

• Arrange atoms in most of the ways permitted by physical law

• Get almost every atom in the right place• Achieve manufacturing costs not much

greater than the cost of the raw materials and energy

Nanotechnology

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Molecular machines

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• Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level

• Today’s surgical tools are huge and imprecise in comparison

Impact

Nanomedicine

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• In the future, we will have fleets of surgical tools that are molecular both in size and precision.

• We will also have computers much smaller than a single cell to guide those tools.

Impact

Nanomedicine

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Mitochondrion~1-2 by 0.1-0.5 microns

Size of a robotic arm~100 nanometers

Impact

8-bit computer

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“Typical” cell: ~20 microns

MitochondrionSize of a robotic

arm ~100 nanometers

Impact

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Mitochondrion

Molecular computer + peripherals

“Typical” cell

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Correcting DNA

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Respirocytes

http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Respirocytes.html

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• Nanosensors, nanoscale scanning

• Power (fuel cells, other methods)

• Communication

• Navigation (location within the body)

• Manipulation and locomotion

• Computation

• http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine

Nanomedicine Volume I

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• Today’s surgery: intelligent guidance, crude tools

• Drugs: no intelligence, molecularly precise tools

• Cell repair systems: intelligent guidance, molecularly precise

Types of medical treatment

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• Today, loss of cell function results in cellular deterioration:

function must be preserved

• With future cell repair systems, passive structures can be repaired. Cell function can be restored provided cell structure can be inferred:

structure must be preserved

A revolution in medicine

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98.6º F

-320º F

Cool Revive

Time

Tem

pera

ture

(Decades)

Cryonics

98.6º F

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• Select N subjects• Vitrify them• Wait 100 years• See if the medical technology of 2100 can

indeed revive them

But what do we tell those who don’t expect to live long enough to see the results?

Clinical trials

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It works It doesn’t work

SignUp

DoNothing

Live

Die

DieLose life insurance

Die

The choice

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Mammalian Organs and Organized TissuesSuccessfully Preserved by Slow Cooling

to 60 Degrees Centigrade.

* Partial success only; pancreases supported life.Adapted from Analysis of “Solution Effects” Injury: Rabbit Renal Cortex Frozen in the Presence of Dimethyl Sulfoxide, by Gregory M. Fahy, Cryobiology 17, 371-388 (1980)

Adrenal cortexAnterior pituitaryArterial smooth

muscleAtrial fragments

Bone marrowCartillage

Cerebral cortex (fetal)CorneasEmbryos

EpididymusFallopian tubeHearts (fetal)Heart valves

Intestine & intestinal smooth muscle strips

Kidney tissueLegs (in vivo)Livers*

Microvasculature*Ovarian tissuePancreases (adult* &

fetal)Parathyroid tissueProstate tissueSeminal vesicles

Skin

Spleens* & splenic tissue

Superior cervical ganglia

Testicular tissueThymus glandsThyroid tissueTooth germsTrachea (fetal)

UretersUteri and uterine

horns*Veins (jugular)Ventricular tissue

Cryopreservation

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The choice

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“Don’t leave him in the hands of 20th Century medicine!”

Dr. Leonard McCoy

of the Starship Enterprise

Circa 2185

The future perspective

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END OF TALK

End

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Future descendants of SPMs could rapidly scan the surface of cryofixed tissue with molecular precision

• Electrostatic

• Van der Waals

• Conductivity

• Many others

Surface scan

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Surface scan

EM image of metal replica of the surface

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Frozen Kidney Vitrified Kidney

-130°C

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A “sticky” probe could remove individual surface molecules

•Carbene

•Boron

•Metals

•etc.

Surface scan

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SURFACE

PROBESTICKY

Surface scan

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SURFACE

PROBESTICKY

Surface scan

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SURFACE

PROBESTICKY

Surface scan

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SURFACE

PROBE

Surface scan

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Surface scan

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• Volume of the brain: 1350 cc• Repair devices: 3 x 1015

• Repair time 108 seconds (~three years)• Proteins in brain: 1.2 x 1021

250 seconds/protein• Atoms in brain: 1026

0.003 seconds/atom

Volume scan

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Microbivore Eats Bacterium

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• Medical Hypotheses Vol. 39, 1992; 6-16

• One of six articles on “cryonics” in PubMed

• The only article assessing feasibility

• Simple “brute force” approach: scan everything, repair as needed

• http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html

Published articles

The Technical Feasibility of Cryonics

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“...having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!”

Benjamin Franklin 1773

A visionary

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Cryobiologists are often asked how long cells can remain viable at -196 degrees C, the temperature of boiling liquid nitrogen (which is the usual cryogenic fluid). The answer is clear — more than 1000 years.

Peter MazurStopping Biological Time: the Freezing of Living Cells. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 541: 514-531, 1988.

Cryopreservation

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Although several aspects of synaptic structure appear to change with experience, the most consistent potential substrate for memory storage during behavioral modification is an alteration in the number and/or pattern of synaptic connections.

– The anatomy of a memory: convergence of results across a diversity of tests- William T. Greenough and Craig H. Bailey, Trends in

Neuroscience, 1988, Vol. 11, No. 4, pages 142-147.

Memory

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As Hardy et al. stated, it is apparent that both human and rat brain tissue frozen to -70 degrees C with almost no cryoprotection has synapses "closely comparable to [those from]... fresh tissue."

– The cryobiological case for cryonics, citing– Hardy, J.A., P.R. Dodd, A.E. Oakley, R.H. Ferry, J.A.

Edwardson, and A.M. Kidd, Metabolically active synaptosomes can be prepared from frozen rat and human brain, J Neurochem, 40, 608-614 (1983).

Preservation of synapses

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The scientific literature allows no conclusion other than that brain structure and even many brain functions are likely to be reasonably well preserved by freezing in the presence of cryoprotective agents, especially glycerol in high concentrations.

– The cryobiological case for cryonics

Preservation of brain structure

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Web pages

www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/

www.zyvex.com/nano

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“Everyone who has died and told me about it has said it’s terrific!”

Shirley MacLaine