Research and development initiatives

Research pages are easy to make impressive.

Add a timeline, a few laboratory images and a distant milestone called “revival”. Suddenly an organisation looks scientific, even if none of that work changes what happens to a patient.

We think the standard should be harder than that.

Research at Tomorrow.bio has to do one of two things. It should improve the procedure we can deliver now, or remove one of the real obstacles between cryopreservation and future revival.

Sometimes the result is a new piece of equipment in an ambulance. Sometimes it is a measurement that tells us where a procedure still failed. And sometimes it is a long-term project that may take years before it is ready for a patient.

Those are all legitimate forms of progress. They are not the same kind of claim.

The next patient matters first

A human cryopreservation procedure does not happen in a controlled laboratory at a convenient hour.

It begins wherever a member happens to be. The team may face a small room, difficult vascular access, delayed legal pronouncement or hours of transport before the patient reaches the next stage.

So our first R&D question is very practical: what can make the next procedure faster, more consistent and easier to perform correctly?

This is why some of Tomorrow.bio’s most useful development work does not look futuristic at all.

We have built surgical training dummies with realistic internal anatomy, a purpose-built surgical ice bath for our ambulances and a cooling mask that disperses cold water across the head while leaving the team access to work.

They solve ordinary problems. Training should be repeatable. Equipment should fit the actual vehicle. Cooling should begin quickly without turning the workspace into chaos.

Honestly, this kind of engineering is less glamorous than talking about reversing cryopreservation. It is also what can improve preservation quality today.

The same logic applies to cannulation, perfusion and field cooling. Tomorrow.bio’s published 2026 plan includes trials of faster access techniques, including multi-point cannulation and earlier washout through femoral access while initial stabilisation continues.

These are trials, not routine claims. A technique earns a place in the standard protocol only after the team can perform it reliably and the evidence shows that its added complexity produces a real benefit.

That difference matters. “We plan to test it” is honest. “We do it” requires operational proof.

The aim is not novelty. The aim is less warm ischemia, faster cooling and better cryoprotectant delivery in the conditions that human cases actually give us.

We measure because confidence is not data

You cannot improve a procedure seriously if every case ends with “the team did its best”.

Of course the team did its best. That tells us almost nothing about the result.

Tomorrow.bio records the patient’s timeline, temperatures and procedure data so we can inspect what happened rather than reconstruct it from memory. The S-MIX metric turns time, temperature and metabolic support into a model of ischemic exposure.

It is useful because sixty minutes at one temperature does not have the same biological meaning as sixty minutes at another. It is still a model, not a microscope image and not a direct measurement of memory.

After cryoprotection and computer-controlled cooldown, Tomorrow.bio CT-scans every human patient at liquid-nitrogen temperature before long-term storage.

Keeping the scan temperature standardised matters. X-ray attenuation changes with physical conditions, so comparing patients at the same cryogenic temperature gives us a more consistent basis for estimating cryoprotectant distribution and identifying regions with low concentration or ice.

This is one of the strongest parts of our quality system. It still does not answer every question.

CT cannot resolve cell membranes, synapses or the fine architecture believed to support memory and identity. A very good scan is therefore necessary evidence, but it is not final proof that the brain’s ultrastructure was preserved.

That is why Tomorrow.bio has begun adding an ultrastructural quality programme. With member consent, small samples from the brain and/or spinal column can be examined by electron microscopy.

The goal is to see preservation at a scale CT cannot reach. As of August 2026, Tomorrow.bio has described this work publicly, but it has not published patient electron-microscopy results that would justify declaring the ultrastructure problem solved.

This is exactly how the pieces should fit together. S-MIX describes modeled ischemic exposure. Procedure data shows how perfusion and cooling progressed. CT maps whole-patient density patterns. Electron microscopy can inspect selected tissue at much finer resolution.

No single number gets to pretend it measures everything.

The full approach is explained in how we evaluate preservation quality.

The harder work takes longer

Better field procedures reduce damage. Better measurements tell us what remains. Neither one, by itself, gives us reversible cryopreservation.

That longer path includes improved cryoprotectants, storage with less thermal stress, controlled rewarming, cryoprotectant removal, reperfusion, repair and eventually restoration of biological function.

Each problem is connected to the next.

A stronger cryoprotectant may suppress ice better but create more toxicity. Faster delivery may protect tissue earlier but make pressure and edema harder to control. A protocol that works beautifully in a laboratory organ may behave differently after a real-world period of ischemia.

This is why Tomorrow.bio’s cryoprotectant work focuses on realistic cases, not only ideal laboratory conditions.

The published 2026 programme includes a new variant of the current cryoprotectant and possible blood-brain-barrier modifiers intended to reduce brain dehydration and shrinkage during perfusion. These are development targets until implementation and results are documented.

Storage creates another problem. Cooling vitrified tissue to minus 196 degrees Celsius produces contraction and can add thermomechanical stress.

Intermediate Temperature Storage, or ITS, aims to keep a patient below the relevant glass-transition region without descending all the way to liquid-nitrogen temperature.

In August 2026, the first human-sized ITS system arrived at the EBF facility in Switzerland. Tomorrow.bio is the first cryopreservation organisation to possess a human-sized system of this kind.

It is not in routine patient service.

The system is in a multi-month test phase measuring temperature stability, spatial uniformity, nitrogen use, control behaviour and failure modes. That sequence is important: receive it, instrument it, try to break it, define its limits and only then decide whether it is ready for patients.

Beyond storage sits the hardest part.

A future revival pathway would require large volumes to warm evenly without cracking or forming ice. Cryoprotectants would have to be removed, circulation restored and injury repaired without creating a new wave of damage.

No present technology can do this for a cryopreserved human. There is also no guarantee that such technology will exist.

Tomorrow.bio’s roadmap names warming, reperfusion, repair and restoration because these are the problems that have to be solved. Naming them is not the same as solving them.

Still, I prefer a difficult research programme that begins with the real obstacles to a reassuring story that jumps straight from storage to waking up.

The technical barriers are explored in the challenges of reversible cryopreservation and how revival might eventually be achieved.

A roadmap should show what changed

One theme from our member conversations is very clear: people want to see the work.

They want procedure updates, quality results, progress at EBF and an honest account of what is still experimental. That is a reasonable expectation when someone is trusting an organisation with a very long-term commitment.

Tomorrow.bio publishes its R&D roadmap, annual priorities, technical documents and case reports so a reader can inspect more than a promise.

The reports matter because actual cases are where development meets reality. A cooling curve, CT result or difficult perfusion can expose a weakness that no polished diagram would show.

Then the useful question becomes concrete: what did we learn, what changed in the protocol and did the following cases improve?

This process will not move in a perfect line. Some trials will fail. Some ideas will be replaced. A negative result can still be valuable if it prevents us from repeating the same mistake on a patient.

But the direction should remain obvious.

Make the next procedure better. Measure it honestly. Use what we learn to improve the following one. At the same time, keep attacking the larger problems that stand between preservation and revival.

That is what research and development at Tomorrow.bio is for.

Further reading

Applied engineering at Tomorrow.bio
How preservation quality is evaluated
Modern Cryogenic Storage System (ITS)
How revival might be achieved