Alex Zhavoronkov wants to spend the years before clinical trial results become available in reversible biostasis, preserving his body at an extremely low temperature with the aim of restoring its function later

Alex Zhavoronkov wants to spend the years before clinical trial results become available in reversible biostasis, preserving his body at an extremely low temperature with the aim of restoring its function later

On August 3, the founder of the biotechnology company Insilico Medicine described his personal plan: once the technology has been shown to work, he would enter reversible biostasis and remain there for years until clinical trial results become available.

In an August 3 post, Alex Zhavoronkov wrote:

“My plan is to enter reversible biostasis once there is evidence that the technology works.”

His proposal is for biostasis to preserve the body at an extremely low temperature and later restore its vital functions. Waiting for trial results would become an engineering problem: carrying a person across a long span of time while preserving tissues and organ function.

One research path toward this goal is organ vitrification. Cryoprotectants bring tissue into a glass-like state without ice crystals, which damage cells during conventional freezing. The organ must then be rewarmed quickly and uniformly. Heat applied at the surface reaches the center later, and the resulting temperature gradient can fracture the fragile tissue.

A 2025 study tested how well this approach scales with volume. The researchers vitrified up to three liters of cryoprotectant solution and uniformly rewarmed up to two liters. In a separate experiment, they vitrified a pig liver.

Zhavoronkov’s personal plan would require the entire sequence to work: protecting tissues during cooling, preserving them, rewarming them without damage, and restoring their function. He connects two timescales: the years medicine needs to produce results and the years for which a person would need to be preserved.