$100M Z-PRIZE
A moonshot prize for the first lab to demonstrate reversible whole-body cryonics in a mouse. Currently seeking funding.
The Challenge
Cryopreserve a mouse, thaw it, and have it survive long-term in good health. No lab on Earth can do this today. Solve it once in a mouse and the path to human reversible cryonics becomes engineering, not science fiction.
$100M Mouse Reversible Whole-Body Cryonics
- Awarded for first reversible whole-body cryonics in a mouse
- Mouse must be cryopreserved, thawed and survive long-term
- Foundational milestone toward human reversible cryonics
- Open to any qualifying lab globally
- Status: Seeking Funding
Why This Prize Matters
Cryonics today is a one-way street. Patients are vitrified at death in the hope that future technology will revive them. Nobody, anywhere, has demonstrated that the round trip works in a mammal.
That single missing data point gates the entire field. Insurers, governments, hospitals, transplant networks and biotech investors will not move on cryopreservation at scale until reversibility is proven in a living mammal.
The mouse is the right target. Small enough to vitrify with current cryoprotectant chemistry, complex enough to settle the biological questions, cheap enough to iterate on at speed. Solve the mouse and every downstream industry unlocks.
A $100M prize is the right instrument. It is large enough to attract serious cryobiology, organ-preservation and gene-therapy labs worldwide. It pays only on result, so funders take zero technical risk. And it concentrates global talent on the single hardest problem instead of fragmenting across small grants.
The Industry It Unlocks
Reversible cryopreservation is potentially a multi-trillion dollar industry
Organ Transplantation
- Tens of thousands of donor organs discarded yearly due to short ex-vivo windows
- Reversible cryopreservation enables true organ banking
- Eliminates geographic and time constraints on matching
- Saves over 100,000 lives per year on transplant waiting lists globally
Trauma & Emergency Medicine
- Battlefield and trauma suspended animation buys hours instead of minutes
- Stroke, heart attack and haemorrhage windows extended
- Time-critical surgery becomes elective
- Adopted by every military and trauma system globally
Human Cryonics
- Reversibility transforms cryonics from speculation to standard medicine
- Insurance coverage and hospital integration become viable
- Terminal illness pause-and-treat protocols emerge
- Long-duration spaceflight and deep-sea exploration enabled
Fertility & Reproduction
- Whole-ovary and whole-testis preservation for cancer patients
- Indefinite fertility extension
- Gamete and embryo banking with zero degradation
Drug & Gene Therapy
- Cell therapies stored indefinitely without potency loss
- Personalised gene-therapy products shipped globally
- Living tissue assays for drug discovery
Longevity Medicine
- Pause-and-rejuvenate protocols for terminal patients
- Bridge to future rejuvenation therapies
- Aligns directly with the Mission: Reverse Aging programme
Who Should Fund This
Family offices, sovereign wealth funds, longevity-aligned philanthropists and visionary corporates who want to put a single check on the table that reshapes medicine for a century.
Funding can be structured as a milestone-locked prize trust, a syndicate of co-funders, or a sponsored endowment. The full $100M is only paid on verified result. Partial milestone payments can be staged for measurable interim progress (vitrification reversibility in single organs, then organ systems, then whole-body).
If your name is on this prize, it is on the founding document of an entire industry.