Human hibernation enabling interstellar travel. Genetically engineered mitochondria powered by light that could slow human ageing. Automated bioreactors orbiting the earth, producing cells and tissues in zero gravity.
These were some of the ten sometimes "crazy" sounding projects pitched on December 10 in Berlin as part of a new initiative to train researchers and start-up founders to imagine and then create ambitious new vistas of science and technology.
This year is the first time the Big if True Science Accelerator, set up by the US-based Renaissance Philanthropy, has trained a cohort of scientists based in the EU.
The non-profit organisation, which tries to convince rich donors to give to novel science and technology projects, has also this year launched the accelerator in the UK, after several previous rounds coaching inventors in the Americas.
The accelerator tries to fill what Renaissance argues is a gap in the R&D system, creating coordinated research programmes (CRPs) where a scientifically-grounded leader brings together and funds disparate experts to make a technological vision into reality. Precedents can be found in the creation of the internet, mRNA vaccines and global positioning systems, but generally such programmes are too big and ambitious to be funded by a traditional academic grant. They're also too early-stage to attract venture capital funding, the group says.
The aim of the accelerator is to help entrepreneurial scientists create a fleshed out, fundable CRP programme, and then pitch it to government innovation agencies or philanthropists for funding.
In other words, the accelerator trains a kind of freelance programme manager, in the mould of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The accelerator's fellows are often mentored by programme managers from DARPA or other US ARPAs.
"If you want to do something that's much bigger than any one company, bigger than any one lab, something that could drive breakthroughs that transform society, there's really nothing to help," said Jean-Paul Chretien, director of the accelerator, during the Berlin event.
Over the course of four months, Renaissance helps applicants hone their ideas into "shovel-ready" funding programmes, said Chretien, a former programme manager at DARPA.
The idea is that successful fellows of the accelerator get hired by a US ARPA, Germany's Sprind innovation agency, the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency, win philanthropic funding, or are able to build their vision within a deep-pocketed research institute.
Human hibernation
Among the fellows pitching in Berlin was Alexander German, a medical doctor and start-up founder who wants to find ways for humans to medically hibernate. "Nature has found a solution for this," he said. "Hibernators like the Arctic ground squirrel can super cool to -2.9 degrees C body temperature for weeks."
With venture capital funding for human hibernation having collapsed, it is a "perfect point in time for Sprind and philanthropists to have an impact and to make medical hibernation a reality," he told the audience.
Shorter-term, hibernation could keep donor organs fresher for longer, improving transplantation success. But longer-term, human hibernation could "facilitate deep space exploration," German said during his pitch session.
Light-powered mitochondria
Shahaf Peleg, a researcher into ageing based in Rostock, wants to create engineered mitochondria, the organelles that produce the body's energy using oxygen, that can be given a power boost by harnessing light provided by special cells introduced into the body.
"It always sounds a bit crazy when I talk to people," he told the pitch event in Berlin. The idea is a bit like hooking up solar panels to an existing power plant inside the body, one of Peleg's fellow researchers has explained.
Peleg and colleagues have demonstrated that the technique can extend lifespan in worms. But now, "we really need to translate it into mammals," he said.
Initially, light-powered mitochondria could be useful in situations where humans have low oxygen, such as during surgery.
But because mitochondria become less effective as we age, Peleg thinks giving them extra light power could help slow human ageing. "I think it will be probably the first attempt to increase human lifespan in a non-incremental way," he said.
Space bioreactors
Another pitch, by Jerome Unidad, a technologist based in Paris, argued that it is time to launch larger-scale, automated bioreactors into low-earth orbit.
For decades, scientists have conducted small-scale experiments showing that cells, tissues and proteins grow differently in low-gravity, opening up the possibility of entirely new manufacturing processes in space.
But the current bioreactors in orbit are "not that sophisticated," Unidad said, likening them to home-made jars of pickles. For "commercial scale bioproduction, we need to advance this a lot further," he said.
Continuous hormone tracking
Other ideas pitched in Berlin included a project to build biosensors to continuously monitor women's hormone levels, which should give much better advance warning of impending diseases.
"It is really expensive for our public healthcare systems that we don't have better data on women's hormones," said Ida Tin, co-founder of the period and fertility-tracking app Clue.
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Jan Jedryszek, a physics PhD student at Technical University of Munich, wants to build a synthetic cell to transform our understanding of biology.
"You only understand something if you build it," he said. Unlike computer science or engineering, synthetic biology was still an "Edisonian" science, which involved "tinkering" and trial and error, rather than understanding basic principles.
"We have absolutely no idea how that thing works," he said of cells. "Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying or incompetent."
Several fellows at the Berlin event pitched directly to Sprind, which funded the EU cohort of the accelerator, to turn their ideas into one of the agency's challenges.
But if they don't get hired, some hope to win funding from US billionaire philanthropists, other governments, or private money for a more short-term, immediately marketable version of their idea.