Neuroscience · Brain preservation
Nectome
A laboratory result independent judges verified, attached to a commercial plan MIT cancelled, neuroscientists attacked, and the company has since rewritten. In 2026 it is in Portland, Oregon, working from a preprint and a state assisted dying law.
Three days, and a roll of tamper-proof stickers
Ken Hayworth is a connectomics researcher at Janelia Research Campus, part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2010 he set up the Brain Preservation Foundation and put a prize in front of the field, funded by a $100,000 pledge from entrepreneur Saar Wilf. The rules were narrow: preserve a whole mammal brain so every synapse could be traced back to its neuron, in a state that should hold a century.
By the founder’s own account, Hayworth flew out to the cryobiology company 21st Century Medicine and stayed three days, watching a rabbit and a pig brain go through the procedure. When he was not looking at the samples he sealed them with tamper-proof stickers to hold the chain of custody, then carried them to Janelia and imaged them himself.
The foundation awarded its small mammal prize in February 2016 and its large mammal prize, worth $80,000, in March 2018. Its announcement records that the pig brain was checked with extensive 3D electron microscopy after rewarming, with Princeton neuroscientist Sebastian Seung judging.
That is the part outside people checked and signed off on. Everything after was about what the company said the result meant.
One sentence in March 2018
On March 13, 2018 MIT Technology Review published a profile by Antonio Regalado ahead of Y Combinator demo day. It reported that to get a brain fresh enough, the company intended to begin its chemical procedure on terminally ill patients while they were still alive, under anesthesia, and that it had consulted lawyers about California’s assisted dying statute. The product, cofounder Robert McIntyre told the magazine, was “100 percent fatal.”
The same article reported a waiting list: a refundable $10,000 deposit, 25 people signed up, one of them Sam Altman. It also reported that the company had preserved the brain of an elderly woman in Portland who had donated her body, about two and a half hours after her death. McIntyre called it “one of the best-preserved ever” while noting the delay had damaged it. Within three weeks MIT had moved.
Two MIT graduates and a barn
McIntyre and Michael McCanna met as MIT sophomores. McCanna went to Amazon, then Dropbox. McIntyre started a master’s in artificial intelligence, then came back to neuroscience after a walk with his father, an emergency physician turned psychiatrist, who asked what he would do if he were banned from AI.
He spent two years as an unpaid volunteer at 21st Century Medicine, tried about eighty fixatives before one worked, and published the method with cryobiologist Greg Fahy in Cryobiology in 2015. Nectome was founded that year. That founder now goes by Aurelia Song; the Brain Preservation Foundation records both names on its prize pages.
What MIT actually said
MIT was not a bystander. Under a subcontract funded by Nectome’s federal grant, roughly $300,000 was flowing to the Media Lab group of Edward Boyden to combine the company’s chemistry with expansion microscopy, an MIT invention. On April 2, 2018 the Media Lab ended it, citing “upon consideration of the scientific premises underlying the company’s commercial plans, as well as certain public statements that the company has made.” Boyden, it said, had no financial, operational or contractual affiliation.
The statement went further than a contract notice. It said nobody knows which biomolecules have to survive for a memory to survive, and that nobody can currently measure or create consciousness. Sten Linnarsson of the Karolinska Institute told MIT Technology Review the collaboration had lent the company credibility and raised the chance that people would kill themselves to donate their brains.
The company offered deposit holders their money back. In 2019 McIntyre told STAT there had never been a promise, only 30 “early supporters”.
Portland, 2026
The plan that caused the row is gone. The company’s process page states that Nectome’s human preservation is an “exclusively post-mortem procedure and has never been fatal or performed in conjunction with euthanasia.”
Replacing it took nine years. A preprint posted to bioRxiv on March 4, 2026 by Aurelia Song, Anna LaVergne and Borys Wróbel, all three declared as Nectome employees, reports a pig study establishing that “14 min is the approximate length of the perfusability window” after cardiac arrest. The company is now asking terminally ill people to come to Oregon, which has a Death with Dignity Act, and donate their bodies and brains for research after death. Wróbel, chief scientist according to Metro, stressed that the work is a preprint and not yet peer reviewed.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Method paper | Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, McIntyre and Fahy, Cryobiology, 2015. PubMed PMID 26408851. | Public record |
| Prize verification | BPF small mammal prize, Feb 2016 (rabbit); large mammal prize, Mar 2018 (pig), $80,000. Samples imaged by BPF president Ken Hayworth at Janelia, with Sebastian Seung judging. The BPF states it does not support offering the method to human patients on one demonstration. | Independent |
| Federal grant | NIH RePORTER lists three NIMH awards under R41MH112318 to NECTOME, INC., PI Robert McIntyre: $413,765 (FY2016), $456,444 and a $45,626 supplement (FY2017). Total $915,835. | Public record |
| Grant size as reported | MIT Technology Review and the BBC reported $960,000. Live Science reported more than $915,000. STAT reported $870,209. RePORTER totals $915,835. | Reports differ |
| MIT subcontract | About $300,000 of the grant went to Edward Boyden’s Media Lab group. Terminated by MIT, Apr 2, 2018. | Public record |
| 2018 plan versus 2026 statement | In 2018 the company described beginning the procedure on a living patient and called it 100 percent fatal. In 2026 its site says the procedure is exclusively post-mortem and has never been fatal. | Claim changed |
| Current evidence | bioRxiv preprint, Mar 4, 2026, pig model, roughly 14 minute perfusability window. Not peer reviewed. Authors declare Nectome employment. | Public record |
| Human results so far | The founder wrote in March 2026 that the best human brain the company has preserved, from a donor perfused 90 minutes after death, was still not traceable to the BPF standard. | Company-stated |
| Revival or readout | No demonstration by anyone that memories can be recovered from preserved tissue. MIT’s 2018 statement says that science does not exist. | Not shown |
| SEC filings | EDGAR company and full text search return no filings under Nectome, Sep 23, 2026. | Nothing found |
Read plainly: the chemistry is real, was checked by an outside judge, and is published. Everything downstream of it, that a preserved connectome carries a person’s memories and that some future technology could read them out, is untested. The company’s own 2026 writing concedes the gap between laboratory conditions and a human death, and reports failing to close it.
What to watch
- Whether the March 2026 preprint clears peer review, and where.
- Whether any human preservation under the Oregon route is reported, and whether anyone outside the company judges the tissue traceable.
- Whether the Brain Preservation Foundation, which declined to endorse human use, changes that position.
- Any first SEC filing, which would be the first public capital number since 2018.
- Whether an ethics body outside the company reviews the protocol first.
In their words
“The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide.”
Robert McIntyre, cofounder, MIT Technology Review, March 2018 · Independent
“Product-market fit is people believing that it works.”
Robert McIntyre, MIT Technology Review, March 2018 · Independent
“Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically arrogant. Aren’t we leaving them with enough problems?”
Michael Hendricks, neuroscientist, McGill University, MIT Technology Review, 2018 · Independent
“Fundamentally, the company is based on a proposition that is just false. It is something that just can’t happen.”
Sten Linnarsson, Karolinska Institute, MIT Technology Review, April 2018 · Independent
“Neuroscience has not sufficiently advanced to the point where we know whether any brain preservation method is powerful enough to preserve all the different kinds of biomolecules related to memory and the mind.”
MIT Media Lab statement, April 2, 2018 · Public record
“We have not nor do we plan to administer embalming fluids on a living animal or human.”
Robert McIntyre, email to Live Science, April 3, 2018 · Independent
“When you die, the brain cells die, so there is no memory after death.”
Richard Brown, neuroscientist, Dalhousie University, STAT, January 2019 · Independent
“A brain brought into awareness could never be a true restoration of the person it once was.”
Ben Goult, professor of mechanistic cell biology, University of Liverpool, Metro, April 2026 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordNIH RePORTER, project R41MH112318
- Public recordAldehyde-stabilized Cryopreservation, PMID 26408851
- Public recordUltrastructural preservation of a whole large mammal brain
- Public recordStatement on the MIT Media Lab and Nectome
- Public recordEDGAR search, no results
- IndependentA startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is 100 percent fatal
- IndependentMIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading
- IndependentAfter ghoulish allegations, a brain-preservation company seeks redemption
- IndependentBrain-Uploading Company Has No Immediate Plans to Upload Brains
- IndependentBrain back-up firm Nectome loses link to MIT
- IndependentScientists might have found a way to keep our brains going for hundreds of years
- IndependentLarge Mammal Brain Preservation Prize Won
- IndependentSmall Mammal Brain Preservation Prize Won
- CompanyNectome home page and Our Process page
- CompanyNullius in Verba, by Aurelia Song
- CompanyNectome company page and founder profile
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
