X-Message-Number: 8971
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 23:09:48 -0800
From: Paul Wakfer <>
Subject: Prometheus Newsgroup Post
I just posted the following message to the newsgroups: sci.cryonics,
sci.life-extension and misc.health.alternative. I have copied it here
because there may be new members on this list who know little about the
Project and would be interested.
--------------------------------
The Prometheus Project whose goal is to perfect suspended animation and
see it established as an electable medical procedure for all terminal
patients available in major hospitals worldwide (see URL below) is about
to begin a Pilot Project which will develop the cryopreservatives and
the methods necessary to reversibly vitrify hippocampal brain slices
(see project details below). This project will be conducted at a
research institute associated with a major university medical center
from which it will receive partial funding.
In addition, as founder and promoter of the Prometheus Project, I have
formed a charitable trust, the Full Length Life Society (FLLS) which
will be the funding vehicle for the Pilot Project and the larger
Prometheus Project as it builds up to its intended $1 million per year
funding level. Currently, FLLS has received a total of $69,411 in
donations either already in the bank, siting in my post box in Colton CA
(I am in Toronto for the holidays), on the way in the mail, or promised
as installments during 1998. My goal is to increase this, at least, to
$100,000 by the end of February when we hope to have the plans approved
and begin the Pilot Project.
Actually, there are pledges of over $400,000 per year for ten years. But
these are conditional upon the goal of $1 million dollars per year
funding being achieved and a complete and detailed science and
operational plan being written. Most of the Pilot Project donations to
date have come from pledgers who decided to put some money into the
Project even before those conditions are met.
Because of its life-saving potential through long-term, fully-reversible
stabilization of those who would otherwise be "written off" by current
medical practice, this project is already widely supported by members of
all cryonics organizations and by many life-extensionists who are not
cryonicists. It should be clear, however, that while the success of the
Prometheus Project will be immensely important to those who wish to live
an extended lifespan and are dying from old age before anti-aging
breakthroughs have arrived, it is also applicable to those who are
simply dying prematurely and wish to live a *full length* lifespan as
that is currently defined.
Outline of the Prometheus Pilot Project by Gregory M. Fahy, PhD
At a special meeting in Las Vegas, on Dec 12, 1997 Prometheus
Project Research Director Dr. Greg Fahy announced his plans for the
initial pilot experiments designed to lead Project investigators to
optimal
whole brain cryopreservation methods, and ultimately to perfected
human suspended animation with maximum efficiency. The project
will use a complex brain information processing circuit, the hippocampal
slice, as a test system to determine the conditions required for optimal
cryopreservation of functioning neural networks. Such systems have
never been studied in the past, and concentrating on a brain slice model
should allow the major cryobiological variables to be explored within a
one year time frame rather than in a four year time frame while avoiding
12-hour days and needless expense in testing poor preservation methods
on whole brains.
The hippocampal slice is a standard neurobiological preparation and
can be cultured for hours to weeks, making it possible to prepare slices
on one day, expose them to cryopreservation-related conditions the
following day, and assess their viability the following day, or even
after several days of recovery. The hippocampal slice is a polysynaptic
pathway involving more than one neurotransmitter, and can be
characterized by impulse delay times across multiple or single synapses,
the response to blockers or stimulators of synaptic transmission,
conduction velocities along axon and dendrite fields, and resting
membrane potentials. The hippocampal slice is also of clinical
relevance for studies of epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, amnesia,
ischemia/reperfusion injury, and schizophrenia and is transplantable.
The primary means of assessing hippocampal integrity will be the
use of voltage sensitive dyes. These dyes faithfully follow changes in
membrane potential in real time, allowing the function of the slice to
be visualized directly and recorded using high speed videomicrography.
Methods have already been published by which waves of depolarization
have been directly visualized, recorded, quantitated, and modified by
pharmacological interventions. Since the passage of a wave across the
hippocampal slice requires times measured in milliseconds, even assays
requiring repetitive measurements for signal averaging could be
completed in minutes. This would allow large numbers of slices to be
assessed in a single day, so that the effects of various
cryopreservation
variables can be observed rapidly and efficiently. Voltage sensitive
dyes can measure not only membrane potential, but also
intracellular calcium loading and intracellular sodium levels. Thus,
not only can functional integrity and recovery over days of post-insult
self-repair be determined, but factors associated with observed injury
can be measured as well. In the case of calcium loading, methods have
been published for measuring calcium loading and membrane potential
in the same slice at the same time.
One major advantage of the use of voltage sensitive dyes is the
ability to directly visualize the entire slice. If there are holes
caused
by ice damage, they will be visible. If there are subregions of the
preparation that are damaged, they will be visible. It will not be
possible to be misled by placing microelectrodes at unrepresentative
points in the slice. All damage that is present, in terms of the ability
to maintain normal electrical functions, will be seen.
A second major advantage is ease of obtaining and visually
representing the data. Once the system is properly set up, relatively
unskilled technologists should be able to operate it effectively. And
when it comes time to convey the results of the experiment, a picture
is worth a thousand words.
A third advantage is that, when the functional tests have been
completed, the hippocampal slice can be bathed with fixative for
detailed light and electron microscopy, hopefully with nary a
microelectrode track to distort the results. Thus, the slice permits
both function and ultrastructure to be used as endpoints without
conflicts between the two.
A further point is that the same optical methods used to
characterize injury in the slice model can be applied to the intact
brain in later experiments. Voltage sensitive dyes have been used to
visualize the visual cortical optical dominance columns in monkeys in as
little as 13 seconds, something it took Hubel and Wiesel 20 years to do
with microelectrodes. More importantly, voltage sensitive dyes
partition into nerve cell membranes and axons at a rate that depends
on the magnitude of the membrane voltage at the time they are being
administered. This has allowed the electrical activity of subsurface
brain
regions to be "frozen" in time with a resolution of 20 seconds or less
by
loading the dyes over times that are not long enough to fully saturate
the
membranes with dye. After the dye is administered, the brain is
immediately removed, frozen, and sectioned, and the section examined
for fluorescence. The resulting signal is stable for protracted times
and
does not redistribute over the cut brain surface. Therefore, in
addition
to other methods, the same method used in slices to suggest the
most promising approaches for cryopreserving the whole brain can later
be used on the whole brain to allow a direct comparison of effects seen
in slices and effects seen in whole brains.
Although the fine details of this pilot project remain to be
finalized, the essentials of the plan are clear and compelling. The
ultimate details will depend in large part on the amount of money
available to propel the project forward. The project has seed money,
quiet laboratory space, a sheltered position under the supervision of a
very supportive department head at a major medical research center, and
unlimited access to electron microscopy that can be done directly by
project scientists (rather than through an individual who may not
provide proper representation of the condition of the slices). What is
lacking is a budget for the project. The budget will depend directly on
the degree of financial support obtained in the near future. The target
date for submission of a protocol to the medical center animal care
committee is January 26th. Support received prior to that date will be
used in estimating the budget, and therefore the amount of work, that
can be included in the submitted protocol. These contributions will
determine when a technologist can be hired, whether two technologists
can be hired to share the work and accelerate the project further, and
how much of all other required elements of the project -- equipment,
training, supplies, animals, consulting, and electron and light
micrographs -- can be marshaled for the project.
Thus, your contribution now, preferably in time to provide a tax
write-off for fiscal year 1997, is needed. This is the beginning. With
your support, we could learn more about brain cryopreservation in 1998
than has been learned in the entire history of this field to date, and
1998 could serve as the gateway to truly promising studies on the whole
brain in 1999. Who knows? By acting today, the coming of the millennium
may become even more of an event than we expected.
Comment from Paul Wakfer:
I hope that everyone reading this is as inspired by Greg's words as I am
at this moment.
Those wishing to make a financial contribution to the Prometheus Pilot
Project should send their check to:
Paul Wakfer, trustee for FLLS
1220 E Washington St #24
Colton, CA 92324-6436
NOTE: FLLS stands for the Full Length Life Society, a charitable trust
which has been established to do the promotion, fund raising and
educational work which the Prometheus Project requires. IRS 501(c)3 tax
exempt charitable status has been applied for and is pending.
Since I will be away from SoCal (home in Toronto visiting family) from
Dec 20 to Jan 10, I ask those sending financial contributions to also
send me email informing me of this. My being away also means that,
although you should date your checks in 1997, if you wish a deduction
on your 1997 taxable income, you can count on them not
being deposited until Jan 12 at the earliest.
My Toronto Phone number is 416-968-6291.
-- Paul --
Voice/Fax: 909-481-9620 Page: 800-805-2870
The Prometheus Project -- http://prometheus.morelife.org
Perfected Suspended Animation for Patient Stabilization
until Cures for Their Terminal Diseases are Available
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