What is the Upgrade?
Part 4: Reception
Iknew when I posted that it was going to be big, I didn’t know that it would become one of the most viewed posts of the whole site… and not for great reasons. My naive proposal scared, and annoyed people who felt like the forum had a growing abundance of self-harm addicted, uneducated, and overly optimistic people. Which to be fair was true and led to the gradual abandoning of the forums. Mind you I created this post within the first trimester of my sophomore of high school.
My reaction to this mix of backlash and curiosity came to define my life for the next three years. During which I made it my mission to learn enough to make this a reality. I signed up to take biotechnology because I knew my high school had a BSL(BioSafety Level) 2 lab, which was rare to have access to. Me and the teacher got along very well this favoritism eventually would eventually spread to most of the biology department. Thanks to this I was able to conduct mouse experiments in my last year of high school. I took 1st place in that year’s state science fair.
Throughout this the concept for “The Big Hack” solidified into a startup called Zwytech which was an R&D/supply company with the goal of developing a platform for human augmentation via a transdermal port system. The platform being jokingly called “The Upgrade” as in the upgrade to end all upgrades. The way I envisioned the upgrade working is a one time procedure where neural, and blood ports would be installed with and integrated computing system complete with memory and a screen. The blood ports enabling rapid genetic payload delivery, and the neural ports enabling plug and play sensory augmentation. I saw a world where you could walk down to walmart a buy red eyes, or the ability to feel things half a globe away.
The road to get there was through better ports for other medical applications first. The idea was to start by replacing central lines with a standard port that was much more robust, and less finicky.
The Technology
As outlined earlier the idea was to make a coating the replicated the ECM and therefore caused cell to functionally “stick” to whatever was coated like it was just more skin. While this maybe simple in concept in practice it requires taking whatever you want to coat chemically adhering it to a titanium foam to which collagens (there’s over 15 different types of collagen made by you body) are bonded chemically to the titanium substrate. From there you can start adding in different polymers to reach a desirable hydrogel (our favorites where Chitosan, Chondroitin, Hyaluronic Acid, and other biopolymers from the plant, animal, and fungal kingdoms). Next after the Ti-Col-polymer hydrogel matrix has been made, you can start to add in Cell signaling molecules some of these(like fibrinogen, and other CAMs(cell adhesion molecules))should be chemically linked to said matrix to ensures that certain functions are maintained by the matrix. Others like growth factors, a proteins that tell cells what they should differentiate to should only be suspended in the matrix.
Conclusion
The paragraph above is the results of countless hours of research, testing, and learning. There were/are hundreds of different formulations, changes in methods, and composition that the coating alone with through.
So what was The Upgrade? It was the child of my childhood dreams, my ambition, the patronage of many friends, a revolutionary technology, and the vaporware of a dead startup.
