Nectome is another company trying to provide aldehyde fixation services.
https://nectome.com/
Aurelia Song (formerly Robert L. McIntyre) was one of the authors on the Aldehyde-stabilized Cryopreservation paper 10 years ago. They have spent the last 10 years working on refinements. Nectome has been around for most of that time and has been trying to start providing services. They made this announcement recently:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/E9xfgJH ... /less-dead
and this paper was published:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6489 ... 724v1.full
Here are some of the similarities and differences with Sparks Brain Preservation:
- We both provide aldehyde fixation followed by cryoprotection and storage at freezer temperature.
- We're both in Oregon. Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) is useful in Oregon.
- We currently provide nationwide service. We will come to you. Nectome requires patients to travel to Oregon.
- They will not provide services unless MAiD in used. We strongly recommend MAiD, but do not require it.
- We've had a room in our facility for around 10 years where someone can take advantage of MAiD. Nectome has historically placed a very low priority on any sort of facility of their own. I'm unclear if their future plans include any facility.
- We've both struggled with how or whether to provide whole body services. Our current plan, for those who desire whole body, is to preserve the body separately from the brain using a different technique. We plan to fix, desiccate, and vacuum seal the body. Nectome currently claims they will always preserve the body. That seems to unnecessarily raise costs for most people. I wouldn't be surprised if they follow our lead and optionally store a desiccated body.
- We both perfuse fixative. SBP follows perfusion with immersion because perfusion is unreliable even in the very best circumstances.
I applaud what they are trying to do, but their claims are exaggerated. It's not really a new protocol; it's just aldehyde fixation, the same technique that's been used in science for over 100 years. The main problem with their claims is that there is simply no way at all to guarantee adequate perfusion. Even if MAiD is used, humans go through an agonal process that seems to gradually shut down blood flow to various areas of the brain. In their paper, they sedated the pigs with injections and then injected a euthanasia solution that took effect in one minute. This is completely different from a real human case where they take pills that work much more slowly, not to mention a very significant difference in brain size. My position is that they will almost always have inadequate perfusion, and for them to claim otherwise is misleading. As any mainstream neuroscientist will tell them, they might get nearly perfect preservation if they perfuse the aldehyde while the patient is still alive, but even that is known to fail a certain percentage of the time. We're talking about old unhealthy patients here with lots of variation, not ideal lab cases. Did their pigs have atherosclerosis? They did address these limitations in the paper, but these limitations critically undermine the claims in the announcement such as "We are capable of preserving every neuron and every synapse in the brain". No.
The next problem is their business model. To perform this procedure, a facility and a full staff are required. The staff cannot be hired contractors. They must instead be full-time employees who regularly perform the identical procedure with human bodies. Otherwise it's like trying to cook in someone else's kitchen with a recipe that you almost never use. Mistakes will be made and it will almost certainly go badly. They can't possibly offer a service that they plan to perform once every few years (or decades at the current level of demand) and maintain any sort of proficiency. Their business model involves too few customers to succeed.