Time-slowing trick could save soldiers’ lives

UNITED STATES: The Pentagon is developing a treatment that will ‘‘slow down biological time’’ to save soldiers’ lives, and could also transform civilian medicine.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has called for scientists to work on a biostasis programme that draws inspiration from frogs and tardigrades (aquatic microanimals also known as water bears) that can survive for days in the most extreme conditions by shutting down their bodily processes.

The research agency, which dates from the Cold War and is known for its ambitious projects, aims to achieve a similar shutdown in human beings to extend the ‘‘golden hour’’ during which medical treatment is most likely to save a soldier’s life after an injury.

Tristan McClure-Begley, the programme manager, said: ‘‘Due to the realities of combat, there are often hard limits to the availability of rapid transport and care.’’

Some patients undergoing heart surgery are already cooled to prolong operating time. Rather than looking at refrigeration, Darpa is investigating biochemical technology to put soldiers in a state where they can survive for longer before they reach hospital.

The researchers will take their cues from creatures that can perform cryptobiosis – a state where all metabolic processes appear to have stopped, yet life persists. These include tardigrades, which can survive freezing, near-total dehydration, and extreme radiation.

Rather than attempting to replicate the exact mechanisms, scientists will try to achieve the same biochemical effect. The treatments could be administered on the battlefield via injections, pills or liquids that would affect the body’s proteins at the molecular level, Darpa suggested.

McClure Begley said the challenge would be to slow every cellular process at a similar rate. Pausing some processes while others ran at full speed would ultimately kill cells.

By the end of the five-year programme, Darpa hopes to have ‘‘multiple tools’’.