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takyon writes:

Slowing Biological Time to Extend the Golden Hour for Lifesaving Treatment

When a Service member suffers a traumatic injury or acute infection, the time from event to first medical treatment is usually the single most significant factor in determining the outcome between saving a life or not. First responders must act as quickly as possible, first to ensure a patient's sheer survival and then to prevent permanent disability. The Department of Defense refers to this critical, initial window of time as the "golden hour," but in many cases the opportunity to successfully intervene may extend much less than sixty minutes, which is why the military invests so heavily in moving casualties as rapidly as possible from the battlefield to suitable medical facilities. However, due to the realities of combat, there are often hard limits to the availability of rapid medical transport and care.

DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] created the Biostasis program to develop new possibilities for extending the golden hour, not by improving logistics or battlefield care, but by going after time itself, at least how the body manages it. Biostasis will attempt to directly address the need for additional time in continuously operating biological systems faced with catastrophic, life-threatening events. The program will leverage molecular biology to develop new ways of controlling the speed at which living systems operate, and thus extend the window of time following a damaging event before a system collapses. Essentially, the concept aims to slow life to save life.

[...] DARPA will hold a Proposers Day webinar on March 20, 2018, at 12:30 PM EDT to provide more information about Biostasis and answer questions from potential proposers. For details of the event, including registration requirements, visit: https://go.usa.gov/xnzqE.

Original Submission