Why Tomorrow.bio’s preservation quality is unmatched

“Unmatched” is a big word.

We use it deliberately.

Tomorrow.bio was not built to offer the same cryopreservation procedure with a nicer website. From the beginning, the goal was to improve the whole chain: response, surgery, cryoprotection, cooldown, measurement, storage and the next procedure after that.

This matters because a cryopreservation can look impressive while telling you very little about its result.

A sophisticated pump is not preservation quality. A low final temperature is not preservation quality. A beautiful laboratory image from an ideal experiment is definitely not proof of what happened inside a real patient.

The patient is the result.

Our claim is simple: no other human cryopreservation organisation has publicly documented the same combination of whole-body field cryoprotection, case data, standardized cryogenic CT, controlled cooldown, published reports and developing ultrastructural analysis as its operating programme.

That is why we consider Tomorrow.bio's preservation quality unmatched worldwide.

Quality starts where the patient is

There is an uncomfortable truth in cryopreservation. The quality of the procedure is already being decided before anyone reaches a storage facility.

When circulation stops, oxygen delivery stops. At normal body temperature, injury develops quickly. Cooling slows this process, but it cannot erase time that has already passed.

So we built the procedure around the patient, not around the building in Switzerland.

Our ambulances are mobile operating rooms. Where circumstances permit, our standard approach is whole-body field cryoprotection: the surgical and perfusion procedure happens locally, close to where the patient was pronounced legally dead.

This is much harder than transporting someone first and doing the complicated work later.

It requires trained people, medical-grade perfusion equipment, cryoprotective agent, surgery, temperature management and enough redundancy to run a procedure outside a controlled hospital environment.

Honestly, it would be easier not to do it.

But waiting for a long international transport before cryoprotection makes little sense when time and temperature are central to the result. Field cryoprotection lets us begin perfusion sooner and cool the patient to dry-ice temperature before transport.

That does not make every case identical. An expected death with a team already present is different from an unexpected death discovered hours later.

It does mean the operating model is designed around the highest quality we can realistically achieve in each situation, rather than around the easiest logistics for us.

The published S-MIX framework helps describe the exposure that occurred before and during a case. It weights time by temperature and the circulatory support being provided.

S-MIX is reported when the underlying case data support it. For example, the public report for Patient 26 shows the calculation beside temperature, pressure and perfusion data.

It is not a magic quality score. It is a way to make an important part of the procedure inspectable instead of hiding it behind words such as “fast” or “good.”

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We record the procedure, then inspect the result

During cryoprotection, our teams record temperature, pressure, flow, solution concentration and the timing of major procedural steps.

Each measurement answers a different question.

Pressure and flow show how the circuit behaved. Refractive index helps estimate the concentration of cryoprotective agent entering and leaving the patient. Temperature curves show how quickly different parts of the body cooled.

Together, those data tell us whether the procedure ran as intended.

But this is where many quality arguments stop too early. A machine can report normal pressure while part of the brain remains poorly perfused. An apparently smooth procedure can still produce an uneven result.

So we look afterward.

Since Tomorrow.bio began performing human cryopreservations, every person cryopreserved by us has received a CT scan before entering long-term storage.

The final scan is performed with the patient submerged in liquid nitrogen at approximately -196°C. This detail is not cosmetic.

CT attenuation changes with density, and density changes with temperature. If one patient is scanned warmer than another, the apparent difference may partly come from temperature rather than preservation.

By scanning every patient at the same cryogenic endpoint, we remove a major source of variation. That makes comparisons between regions and between cases far more meaningful.

The scan can show cryoprotectant distribution, regions consistent with ice formation, major swelling or shrinkage, gas and visible fractures. Tomorrow.bio colour-codes the images to make differences in inferred cryoprotectant penetration easier to inspect.

Our published 2026 quality plan reports that, since 2024, close to 100% of the brain in our cases has shown sufficient cryoprotective concentration for vitrification on CT.

That is a strong result. We should say so plainly.

It is also why our quality programme is moving to a smaller scale. CT can inspect the whole patient, but it cannot see a membrane, an axon or a synapse.

If memory and identity depend on physical structure in the brain, gross anatomy is not enough. We need to know what happened to the fine architecture of neural tissue.

Electron microscopy can examine that scale.

With separate consent, Tomorrow.bio may collect up to three small samples from selected brain or spinal-cord regions. These samples are intended for ultrastructural analysis and for improving future procedures.

This is not yet a routine published outcome for every patient.

The programme is in development, sampling is optional, and one tiny sample cannot certify an entire brain. The public Patient 26 report records two consented brain samples, but does not yet present their electron-microscopy results.

That distinction matters. We are proud of the direction without pretending that an R&D programme is already a finished clinical metric.

Once results are available, electron microscopy can add something CT cannot: direct evidence about membranes, synapses, myelin, organelles and local tissue damage.

The broad scan and the tiny sample solve opposite problems.

CT gives us coverage across the patient. Electron microscopy gives us depth at selected locations. The real quality picture comes from combining them with the timeline and perfusion data.

Our quality-check programme is built around this layered approach because no honest single number can represent the whole preservation.

Cooldown is part of the same chain.

After cryoprotection, the patient is cooled rapidly toward the glass-transition region, then much more slowly toward cryogenic storage temperature. Computer control and temperature probes inside the patient let the team manage the descent and reduce thermal gradients.

That process is explained in computer-controlled cooldown to cryogenic temperatures. The goal is not simply to reach -196°C. It is to reach it while limiting additional stress across a human-sized body.

Transparency is part of the procedure

When we spoke with members, one theme appeared in different forms: trust grows when the organisation feels real, technically serious and open to inspection.

Some people want every graph. Others mainly want to know the graphs exist, the facility can be visited and difficult questions will receive a direct answer.

Those interviews are useful for understanding trust. They are not evidence of preservation quality.

The evidence is in the cases.

Tomorrow.bio publishes numbered reports with timelines, procedure data, CT findings and a discussion of what happened. The public documents library currently includes reports for cases performed in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Publishing the difficult cases is important. Anyone can build a quality story around one ideal procedure.

Real cryopreservation includes late notification, disease, vascular problems, legal delay, unexpected locations and equipment decisions made under pressure. If those cases disappear from the record, the record is useless.

Our reports do not claim that every procedure was perfect. They make it possible to see what happened, what was measured and what we changed afterward.

This is the loop that matters: perform, measure, publish, improve.

Field cryoprotection improves the chance of reaching the tissue early. Procedure telemetry shows what the team did. S-MIX describes ischemic exposure where the data allow it. Controlled cooldown limits avoidable thermal stress.

Cryogenic CT checks the entire patient at a standardized temperature. Consented electron microscopy is being developed to examine the ultrastructure CT cannot see. Long-term care then protects the achieved state at the European Biostasis Foundation facility.

Each part strengthens the others.

Could our preservation quality become better? Absolutely. We expect it to.

Nobody knows the exact preservation threshold required for future revival, and we do not promise revival. That uncertainty is precisely why “good enough” is not an acceptable operating philosophy.

The best programme in this field should be the one that is hardest on its own results.

Tomorrow.bio has built the most complete, measurable and transparent human cryopreservation system operating today. We believe it is unmatched worldwide, and our job is to make that statement more true after every case.

Further reading

• Tomorrow.bio's 2026 preservation-quality programme
• Nine questions to ask a cryopreservation provider
• Technical challenges for high-quality preservation
• Choosing the right cryopreservation provider