A British hospital is taking the first steps towards perfecting a substance which could one day be used to freeze people in suspended animation.

Hextend is an artificial blood plasma already used to keep baboons almost frozen in the US. It now will be tested on humans by a team at London's University College London Hospital Trust.

The substance was developed and patented by scientists at Duke University in North Carolina and developed to help surgeons perform major operations.

Cooling the blood and slowing circulation could give doctors more time to complete complex procedures.

But the technique has risks. As body temperature drops, blood thickens, increasing the danger of clotting, which can be fatal.

Dr Monty Mythen, the leader of the British team, said he hoped Hextend would allow doctors to slow the circulation of patients during heart surgery far more than is now possible.

It could also be used for operating on the brain or for cooling road accident victims to give doctors more time to assess their injuries.

The London trials are due to begin on people needing surgery in the spring.

But putting patients into suspended animation is unlikely to be possible until the 21st century.

Dr Mythen said it would be at least five or six years before Hextend could be tested as a way of bringing patients' circulation to a virtual standstill.

A consultant in anaesthetics and intensive care, Dr Mythen said he was not interested in perfecting "cryogenics" - freezing people so they can be brought back to life sometime in the future - but in improving the success rate of difficult operations.

But he admitted that if the first trials were successful, it could bring the cryogenicist's dream of resurrection and eternal life one step closer.

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