In February 2026, Alcor highlighted new data from Gregory Fahy, a leading cryobiologist and co-developer of the M22 vitrification solution used by Alcor, showing that whole-brain vitrification can preserve ultrastructure much better than previously demonstrated. The work, done with Alcor and a patient volunteer, reported encouraging structural preservation even under less-than-ideal conditions, and a separate preprint dated 2026-02-01 reported that rabbit brains vitrified with M22 showed an absence of visible ice damage and overall structural preservation, while human cortical biopsies after whole-brain perfusion showed predominantly preserved ultrastructure.
The technical signal is clear: the dominant failure mode is shifting away from ice injury and toward osmotic/dehydration injury during perfusion, cooling, and rewarming. That is a major advance for lunar biostasis because it means preservation engineering is becoming more about controlling chemical and physical stress than defeating unavoidable freezing, which improves the plausibility of long-duration information preservation in human neural tissue.
Ark action: track the M22 protocol maturation, especially quantitative metrics for ice fraction, osmotic shrinkage, and post-warming ultrastructural fidelity; prioritize independent replication of whole-brain human and mammalian results; and integrate this line of research into Ark contingency planning for reversible or reconstructable human preservation, because the practical threshold for preserving the biological substrate of memory appears to be moving closer to reach.