Saul Kent and the Science of Cryopreservation

The invaluable contributions of Saul Kent to mainstream cryobiology and cryonics

Life extension activist Saul Kent was cryopreserved on May 26, 2023. It is difficult to overestimate the contributions of Saul Kent to the field of human cryopreservation. Without Saul’s relentless advocacy and financial support, many of the technologies and institutions we take for granted in cryonics today would not exist, including our own organization Biostasis Technologies. We are honored to publish this account of Saul’s contributions by cryobiologist Brian Wowk. Additional memorials and unique materials about Saul’s life will be announced in our July newsletter.

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It’s difficult to do justice to all the contributions made by Saul Kent to the field of human cryopreservation and even broader cryobiology.  For 60 years he did so much visibly, and much more invisibly, that his influence is as ubiquitous and taken-for-granted as the air we breathe.

He was a champion of scientific research for cryopreservation technology development, and a staunch advocate of technical excellence and participation of medical professionals in the clinical practice of cryopreserving people.  The stabilization agents, blood substitute solutions, and vitrification solutions used in cryonics by all organizations today are either directly or indirectly the result of research that Saul made possible.  The participation of board-certified cardiothoracic surgeons and clinical perfusionists in cryonics field stabilization procedures is also due to Saul Kent. 

Saul helped support the research of Jerry Leaf and Mike Darwin at Cryovita Laboratories in the 1980s developing blood substitutes for hypothermic suspended animation.  In the 1990s, with Paul Wakfer and others, Saul started the company, 21st Century Medicine, Inc. (21CM), where Mike Darwin, Dr. Steve Harris, Sandra Russell, and Joan O’Farrell did groundbreaking research mitigating cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury and inventing “liquid ventilation” for rapid post-resuscitation cooling.

At the turn of the century, Saul recruited scientists to work at a new Cryobiology Division of 21CM, which later licensed to Alcor the first vitrification solutions used in cryonics.  Supported by Paul Wakfer and the Institute for Neural Cryobiology, 21CM cryobiologist Dr. Gregory Fahy collaborated with UCLA professor Dr. Robert Morin and cryobiologist Dr. Yuri Pichugin from the IPCC in Ukraine on brain tissue cryopreservation.  This led to Dr. Pichugin later working at the Cryonics Institute, developing their vitrification solution and a novel blood-brain barrier opening technology still being studied.  In 2015, Robert McIntyre and Gregory Fahy published a new vitrification technology for brain banking and neuroscience research, aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC), with support of Saul Kent.  Since mainstream cryobiology mostly studies dilute cryoprotectant solutions for reversible vitrification of small tissue samples, not the concentrated solutions necessary for morphological vitrification of large organs, vitrification would not exist in cryonics were it not for Saul Kent.     

   

With his business partner Bill Faloon, Saul has made possible financial support for cryopreservation research over decades costing tens of millions of dollars.  This had spinoff benefits in mainstream cryobiology that are not and may never be fully appreciated.  Research that they funded when no one else was interested led to new vitrification solutions, ice blockers, improved warming methods, reproducible human cornea vitrification, the first successful vitrification of a vital mammalian organ (rabbit kidney), numerous collaborations that are still ongoing, and scientific publications that have been cited thousands of times.  This re-ignited mainstream research interest in organ cryopreservation that had withered after decades without success, leading to the first reproducible vitrification of a vital mammalian organ (rat kidney) as published in Nature in 2023.  It used new warming technology developed by the University of Minnesota, but also a vitrification solution from 2004 research supported by Bill and Saul.  This is research that could benefit many thousands or even millions of people by cryopreserving products of regenerative medicine.  These successes and new excitement in the field of organ cryopreservation wouldn’t exist were it not for Saul Kent.  

Saul’s work was more visible in the controversial field of cryonics, where over many decades he started or supported companies and organizations too numerous to list.  Yet even in cryonics, his most important work was invisible.  Despite often disagreeing with Alcor leadership, he enthusiastically strategized and marshaled financial support to help Alcor through multiple legal and financial existential crises.  So much so, that it’s unclear whether Alcor would still exist were it not for Saul Kent.     

Saul pursued objectives with great vigor.  He wasn’t known for letting anything or anyone get in his way, even at the expense of personal relationships when an objective important to him was at stake.  With such single-mindedness about cryonics and life extension, it may come as a surprise to some that Saul had friends outside of these fields.  He was also capable of great kindness without any expectation of personal gain.  Sometimes you don’t really know a person until you meet people who visit them while they are ill.

I’ve seen some ignorant comments written about Saul becoming lethally ill in “only” the ninth decade of his life after a lifetime of life extension advocacy.  The reality is that we still live in a time when a cosmic ray hitting DNA at the wrong place at the wrong time can be all that separates life from death.  Biology doesn’t respect philosophy.

Saul had a lifelong passion for sports, not just as a spectator.  He was physically active for most of his life.  During his sixth decade, he would still run for miles on the beach of his Florida home in Fort Lauderdale.  A few weeks before he was cryopreserved, feeling very frustrated by physical weakness and dependency, he told me of a day in his youth while living in New York where he grew up.  He said he ran 15 miles on a beach on Fire Island, then came back to the city and played basketball into the evening for three more hours.  He said, “That’s the real me.”  Physicians of the future take note. 

Brian Wowk, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
21st Century Medicine, Inc.
A scientist recruited by Saul Kent