- United Therapeutics has invested $100 million in the past year to accelerate the development of transgenic pigs intended for human lung xenotransplantation, highlighting a major commercial push toward solving organ shortages.  
- BioTime’s Hal Sternberg reported reviving baboons cooled to 1 °C by replacing blood with the protective solution Hextend, while 21st Century Medicine demonstrated vitrified rabbit kidneys that regain partial function after transplantation and vitrified brain slices that retain neural activity after rewarming.  
- Discussion explored the idea of decellularizing pig hearts, recellularizing the extracellular matrix with a patient’s own young cells, and cryopreserving the resulting “young” organs as backups against age-related decline; it was concluded that reliable organ cryopreservation is not yet feasible.  
- Participants considered an alternative strategy: banking pluripotent stem-cell lines (or their derivatives) cryonically and constructing organs on demand once differentiation and tissue-engineering protocols mature.  
- A Nature article on building a heart via tissue engineering (http://www.nature.com/news/tissue-engineering-how-to-build-a-heart-1.13327) was repeatedly referenced as a practical overview of current decellularization/recellularization techniques.  
- Clinical precedents for autologous tissue storage were noted, including decompressive craniectomy patients who store skull flaps in their own abdomens and hand-reattachment surgeries that temporarily embed the limb in abdominal subcutaneous pockets.  
- DRACOs (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers) were raised as a potential broad-spectrum antiviral; concerns were voiced about possible interference with future whole-organism DNA-editing vectors, and it was clarified that both DNA and RNA viruses exist in nature.  
- A meta-analysis of 50 years of twin studies on the heritability of human traits was shared (http://www.gwern.net/docs/2015-polderman.pdf), providing a quantitative backdrop for discussions on genetic versus environmental influences in transhumanist enhancement.