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Pig organs have been partially revived an hour after the animals were killed, in a breakthrough with the potential to transform medicine, say US researchers.
The technique could increase the number of organs available for transplant and buy doctors more time to save a life if applied to people.
The study also challenges assumptions about what happens in the moments between life and death.
Experts said the findings were "truly remarkable" and "incredibly significant".
When the heart stops beating, the body is starved of oxygen and the nutrients it needs to survive. Organs swell in size, blood vessels collapse and cells - the building blocks of the body's organs - begin to die.
This cellular death was thought to be rapid and permanent, but researchers at Yale University have undone some of that damage in animals which have been dead for an hour.
"We can restore some functions of cells, across multiple vital organs, that should have been dead," said Prof Nenad Sestan.
"These cells are functioning hours after they should not be."
The research team performed a similar feat on just pig brains in 2019. Now they have adapted their technology - called OrganEx - to work across a whole body.
It uses:
The experiments, published in the journal Nature, involved about 100 pigs and were given ethical approval before going ahead.
Scientists deeply anaesthetised the animals and then stopped their hearts. After being dead for an hour, they were connected to the OrganEx system and given the restorative cocktail for six hours. The anaesthetic was maintained throughout the experiments.
After the six hours, the scientists dissected the pigs' organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys. and showed they were partially revived with some functions restored.
There was restoration of electrical activity in the heart, and some heart muscle cells were able to contract. However, the organs were not functioning at the same level as before death.
Researcher Dr Zvonimir Vrselja said: "Things are not as dead as we previously presumed - we have demonstrated that we can actually initiate cell-repair on a molecular level. We can persuade cells not to die."
At one point the pigs' heads and necks began moving spontaneously. It could be a sign they were recovering some motor function, but that will need further investigation.
Neuroscientist Dr David Andrijevic said it was a "quite startling moment". However, he said it was "not indicative of any mental activity on the part of the pig".
Just like the experiment in 2019, there was evidence of repair in the brain. But there were no brainwaves or electrical activity that would suggest consciousness or awareness.
It will take considerably more research before the technology could be adapted to be used on people.
However, the initial aim is to preserve transplant organs for longer, so they can get to patients who need them.
"I think the technology has a great deal of promise for our ability to preserve organs after they're removed from a donor," said Dr Stephen Latham, the director of Yale's interdisciplinary centre for bioethics.
More distant ambitions include making even more people suitable organ donors after death and even as a treatment.
Commenting on the study, Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at New York University, said the study was "truly remarkable and incredibly significant" and it could help explain reports of near-death experiences.
He said the technology could also be used to buy more time for doctors to treat people whose bodies were starved of oxygen, such as those who died from drowning or heart attacks.
He added that this could "bring such people back to life many hours after death".
A health official in New York State has told the BBC there could be hundreds or even thousands of undiagnosed cases of polio there.
It follows an announcement last month that an unvaccinated man had been paralysed by the virus in Rockland County, New York.
His case has been linked genetically to traces of polio virus found in sewage in London and Jerusalem.
Developed countries have been warned to boost vaccination rates.
Dr Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, health commissioner for Rockland County, said she was worried about polio circulating in her state undetected.
"There isn't just one case of polio if you see a paralytic case. The incidence of paralytic polio is less than 1%," she said.
"Most cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and those symptoms are often missed.
"So there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of cases that have occurred in order for us to see a paralytic case."
Dr Ruppert confirmed that scientists are looking at "a linkage" between the New York paralysis case and traces of poliovirus found in wastewater in London and Jerusalem, after genome sequencing was conducted on samples from the three locations.
"This is a very serious issue for our global world - it's not just about New York. We all need to make sure all our populations are properly vaccinated," she said.
The US man who was paralysed has a form of "vaccine-derived" polio, which occurs because some countries use a weakened form of the virus in their vaccinations.
In rare cases, it can mutate and then be transmitted through poor hygiene to others who are unvaccinated.
Global travel means these cases can crop up in countries which are not used to seeing polio, but where there are pockets of low vaccination.
Although weaker than the original or "wild" form of the disease, vaccine-derived polio can still cause serious illness. The virus can attack the nerves in the spine and base of the brain. This can cause paralysis, usually in the legs, but if the breathing muscles are affected too, it can also be life-threatening.
The US and most developed countries use a newer form of the vaccine, which does not contain any live virus.
Dr Ruppert said she never thought she would see a case of polio in the US in her lifetime.
Some areas of Rockland County have historically low vaccination rates of only 60%. In 2018, there was an outbreak of measles there.
Field teams are now being sent into these areas to encourage better uptake of polio vaccination, particularly in children.
In the UK, more testing is currently being carried out after traces of polio virus were found over several weeks at Beckton sewage works during wastewater surveillance.
The UK Health Security Agency is expected to release more details soon about which areas of London are most affected.
Monkeypox is an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission about which we understand ‘too little’, and which meets the criteria of an emergency under International Health Regulations.
“For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern”, the World Health Organization’s Director, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, announced on Saturday during a press conference.
Tedros indicated that the current risk of Monkeypox is moderate globally and in all regions, except in the European region where the risk is high.
“There is also a clear risk of further international spread, although the risk of interference with international traffic remains low for the moment”, he added.
Currently, there are more than 16,000 reported cases from 75 countries and territories and five deaths.
In order to fight the Monkeypox outbreak WHO recommends countries to:
A full set of recommendations adapted to different country contexts is published on WHO’s website, and the agency has also launched a live data dashboard for the monkeypox outbreak.
WHO now has three active public health emergencies of international concern: COVID-19, polio and Monkeypox.