The German startup Tomorrow Bio promises to offer customers the opportunity to freeze their deceased bodies so they can potentially be revived in the future when technology becomes advanced enough.
Despite the costs of $216,000 for whole-body freezing or $80,000 for brain preservation, the first cryopreservation lab in Europe is in high demand, according to Mail. Founded in 2020, the company has already frozen the bodies of 6 individuals and 5 pets, with 650 paying members waiting for their turn. Fernando Azevedo Pinheiro, the co-founder of the company, expresses confidence that he will witness safe cryopreservation and the revival of complex organisms in his lifetime.
The bodies of patients will be stored in tanks filled with liquid nitrogen. (Photo: Tomorrow Bio).
Cryopreservation involves freezing a recently deceased individual. By lowering the body temperature to -198 degrees Celsius, the process aims to keep the body in a state as if it has just died. Later, in the future, the deceased patient may be revived and treated for the disease that caused their death.
The main advantage of Tomorrow Bio in attracting customers is that they can quickly preserve the body after death. “We are the first and only cryonics company to offer on-site cold protection. This means we begin the cryopreservation process immediately after a patient is declared dead, using an advanced ambulance that operates like a mobile operating room,” Pinheiro explains.
As speed is a crucial factor, Tomorrow Bio has deployed a series of standby, stabilization, and transportation (SST) teams in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Zurich. When a patient passes away, these teams will arrive to collect the body once a doctor gives permission. They will place the body in an ice bath while providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and oxygen to slow the effects of decomposition.
Even before reaching the long-term storage facility, Tomorrow Bio’s team aims to lower the body temperature to -80 degrees Celsius. Typically, if the body suddenly cools to this extent, the water in the cells will freeze and expand into ice crystals, destroying surrounding tissues. To avoid this, cryonics companies like Tomorrow Bio use a process called cold protection. This involves a procedure where specialists replace bodily fluids with a cryoprotectant, essentially a medical-grade antifreeze, while simultaneously reducing the body temperature, Pinheiro explains.
Once safely preserved on the way, the customer’s body is transported to a long-term storage facility in Switzerland, owned by an organization affiliated with the company, the European Biostasis Technology Association. Here, the body is gradually cooled to -196 degrees Celsius over 10 days before being moved to a new location, a 3.2-meter-high vacuum-insulated steel tank filled with liquid nitrogen. As these tanks do not require electricity to maintain their cold environment, the company states that the customer’s body can potentially be preserved indefinitely as long as liquid nitrogen is replenished regularly.
Theoretically, patients can safely wait for hundreds of years under the care of the company until technology advances enough. If Tomorrow Bio were to go bankrupt or disappear, the body would be handed over to another affiliated organization, the Tomorrow Patient Care Foundation. To date, approximately 650 people have registered as members to have the standby teams ready, including 149 in Germany, 30 in France, and 30 in the UK, according to the company’s 2023 data. Tomorrow Bio plans to expand into the U.S. market in 2025.
