Space Biostasis Summit announces 30 speakers, including cryobiologist Greg Fahy, hibernation researcher Sinisa Hrvatin and two ARPA-H program managers, to discuss controlled metabolic suspension for spaceflight

Space Biostasis Summit announces 30 speakers, including cryobiologist Greg Fahy, hibernation researcher Sinisa Hrvatin and two ARPA-H program managers, to discuss controlled metabolic suspension for spaceflight

On October 9, the nonprofit Space Biostasis Coalition announced its speaker list. The summit website confirms the program: the conference will take place on February 9–11, 2027, at Space Center Houston, near Johnson Space Center, where NASA trains astronauts. It will focus on engineering approaches to controlled suspension of human metabolism for long-duration spaceflight.

During six months in space, the body deteriorates in predictable ways. According to the coalition's estimates, bones lose about 10% of their density, muscles lose 15% of their mass, and the heart ages as though an additional 10 years had passed. NASA data also indicate a sevenfold increase in the risk of kidney stones. A one-way trip to Mars takes seven to nine months, and every additional day the crew spends in transit adds to the spacecraft's mass and cost. NASA has been exploring ways to address this since 2013, when it proposed a transport module with the crew in induced torpor. In 2024, it supported the STASH experiment on the ISS, which tests whether induced torpor protects animals against muscle and bone loss in microgravity. The European Space Agency calculated that crew hibernation could reduce the size of a Mars spacecraft by a third.

Biostasis is an umbrella term for the controlled, reversible suspension of metabolism. The coalition's website arranges the methods by their stage of development. Hypothermia, routinely used in cardiac surgery and intensive care, provides a pause lasting minutes. Synthetic torpor, induced experimentally by activating brain neurons in mice and hamsters, extends that pause to days. Cryostasis at temperatures near zero is intended to preserve tissues and organs for weeks. Vitrification, which avoids ice formation by producing a glass-like state without destroying cells, could theoretically suspend metabolism for millennia, but it has been demonstrated only in individual animal tissues, not in a whole organism.

For more than ten years, NASA, ESA, cryobiologists, hibernation biologists and federal research funders have pursued this work separately. The summit brings them together for the first time. The speaker list includes Greg Fahy of 21st Century Medicine, who developed the M22 solution used to set a still-unmatched record in the 2000s: a rabbit kidney sustained the animal's life after vitrification, rewarming and transplantation. Another speaker is Sinisa Hrvatin of the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute. His laboratory identified hypothalamic neurons that trigger torpor in mice, and in a Nature Aging paper, his team showed that repeated induced torpor slowed epigenetic aging in mouse blood by almost 40%. ARPA-H, the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that funds high-risk medical research programs, has no dedicated space hibernation program. Two program managers will represent it at the summit. Gloria Elliott leads an $87 million program to store cell therapies without deep freezing and a second initiative pursuing the same goal for donor organs. Jean Hébert leads FRONT, a program to replace aging brain tissue with tissue grafts. This brings the same group of researchers and funders to two related tasks: preserving organs on Earth and suspending metabolism in an entire person for spaceflight.

Six months ago, the coalition had only a statement of intent: a $1 billion funding proposal without a single partner, an account with 29 followers and a summit with no confirmed participants. The tweet announcing the October news, which received just one like, came from an outside observer, Kai Micah Mills, founder of the pet cryopreservation company Cryopets. He wrote: “Controlling human metabolic depression is a matter of life and death, national security and human expansion into space.” Independently of that tweet, the summit website confirms the dates, venue and all 30 speakers and their affiliations. The $1 billion fundraising goal remains unmet: the coalition says it is still considering applications from partners, speakers and sponsors.