What You Should Know:
– Until Labs, a company dedicated to the reversible cryopreservation of biological systems secures $58M in Series A funding led by Founders Fund, with participation from Lux Capital and Field Ventures.
– The funding will be used to grow the company’s multidisciplinary team of experts in chemistry, biology, and engineering.
Solving the Organ Transplant Crisis
The company’s primary focus is on organ-scale reversible cryopreservation. This technology aims to preserve donor organs at temperatures that allow for indefinite storage, and then rewarm them for transplant. This is a crucial step in solving a major challenge in the organ transplant system, where donor organs are often only viable for a few hours after procurement. For example, hearts, lungs, and livers are viable for 4-12 hours, and kidneys for 24-36 hours.
These time constraints mean that patients must live within two hours of their transplant center. As a result, thousands of organs are lost each year due to logistical delays or the lack of a timely match. The goal of Until Labs’ technology is to ensure that every donated organ with the potential to save a life can be used.
A Foundation for Medical Hibernation
Until Labs’ long-term mission is to build the medical infrastructure to pause biological time. The company’s work on organ-scale cryopreservation is an important step toward its ultimate vision of whole-body medical hibernation technology. The company’s research, which began with slices of neural tissue, is now focused on preclinical model organs. The diverse team of experts in perfusion, molecular biology, hardware engineering, and physics is working to develop new methods to maximize organ quality after cryopreservation.
