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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