BRIAN WOWK
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Brian Wowk, PhD
Dr. Brian Wowk is a Senior Scientist at 21st Century Medicine, Inc., a company developing technology for long-term preservation of transplantable tissues and organs. He obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada. His graduate studies included research in radiation oncology and functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain (fMRI), the latter conducted at the National Research Council of Canada. He left the field of medical physics to work in cryobiology, and is the discoverer of the first synthetic molecules ("ice blockers") that prevent ice formation in cryopreservation solutions by mechanisms similar to antifreeze proteins.
Topic: Suspended Animation, long a staple of science fiction, would have profound implications for medicine were it ever to become reality. A new ice free preservation method called "vitrification" allows for simple tissues and organs to be suspended in time indefinitely until needed for transplant. The same technique can be used to preserve large masses of tissue with remarkable structural fidelity, leading some to speculate that suspended animation may already be a solved problem if allowances for future technology are made to reverse the process.
