Friday May 7th, 2151 11:04am PST
By Thomas Wade

SAN DIEGO, CA (Associated Correspondence/BioWire) - During his keynote address at BIOCON in San Diego, AKD Pharma founder Alexy Dimitry announced the commencement of the AKD Pharma personality continuity project. The goal of the project is to grant a person the ability to survive past sudden trauma and even old age, or, simply put, to make immortality a reality for humankind.

Rumors of massive restructuring within AKD had led many to speculate on what the content of Mr. Dimitry's speech was going to be. Many suspected merger and acquisition related activity, or perhaps Mr. Dimitry announcing some kind of personnel action. He revealed in his speech that he was setting up a new facility specifically for supporting the research into the problem.

"Two things are vital to the success of the project. First, the ability for us to create a timely genetically appropriate target organism and the proper reconstitution process for grafting the target personality onto said organism in a continuous nature so that we can avoid certain personality duplication problems", noted Mr. Dimitry.

As part of the Q&A following the speech, Mr. Dimitry noted that one third of AKD pharma's R&D budget , an amount totaling 10 billion, will be directed to the new effort, a move that many industry analysts have criticized as being too aggressive even considering the potential payoff. Other analysts have noted that since AKD is a privately held concern, it is impossible to confirm how much they are indeed spending on this project.

San Francisco based Halsted Securities Analyst Mark Ryoko commented on the action: "Sure, AKD could be spending 10 billion on the project, but they could just as easily be spending 5$ or for that matter 20 billion. Our estimates show that they have approximately 30 billion cash in the company's coffers."

This isn't the first time the Biocontinuity industry has attempted to tackle this problem, the now defunct Jasco Global tried to perfect their brain transplant technology to little real effect and some very real sanctions from global regulatory bodies for their experimentation on clones.

AKD Pharma was founded in 2124 in South San Francisco and is noted for its Previcide and Antiadim psychotropic medications as well as its research into brain chemical balancing medications and treatments.

Sources within AKD Pharma have noted that AKD has wanted to pursue this project ever since the death of his daughter Sophie, in 2123, during a hovercar accident.