myTAIHEART Test Provides Evidence for Injury from Biopsy of Heart Transplant Recipients

MILWAUKEE, Wis.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TAI Diagnostics, Inc., focused on developing innovative diagnostic tests for monitoring the health of transplanted organs, today announced the publication, “Effect of endomyocardial biopsy on levels of donor-specific cell-free DNA” in the October, 2019 issue of The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. The clinical study presented in the paper was conducted jointly by Steven Zangwill, MD, Karl Stamm, PhD, Mats Hidestrand, PhD, Aoy Tomita-Mitchell, PhD and Michael Mitchell, MD.

“Effect of endomyocardial biopsy on levels of donor-specific cell-free DNA”

 

The publication describes the use of the myTAI_HEART^® test to analyze the release of donor-specific cell-free DNA in the blood of heart transplant patients before and after receiving heart biopsies. The clinical data from 20 paired samples indicates that the standard biopsy causes significant injury to a transplanted heart and is evidence of the potential of this technology to serve as a marker of cardiac injury in transplant patients receiving heart biopsies. “The myTAI_HEART^® test is exquisitely sensitive to injury to the donor organ,” said Dr. Aoy Mitchell, co-author and co-inventor of the test.

Transplant rejection is the major determinant of patient outcome and routine monitoring is necessary to detect rejection. The current gold standard for monitoring for the status of organ rejection is tissue biopsy. However, tissue biopsies are very invasive with risks for the patient, subject to sampling error, can be a lagging indicator of organ damage, and expensive for the patient and healthcare system. The myTAI_HEART^® test is performed with a small blood sample and is a direct measurement of organ injury through identification and quantification of donor-specific cell-free DNA which is released from injured cells in the patient’s blood.

About TAI Diagnostics

TAI Diagnostics was founded in 2015 to further develop and commercialize cell-free DNA technology licensed from the Medical College of Wisconsin for monitoring the health of transplanted organs. TAI provides testing services through their CLIA/CAP accredited Clinical Reference Laboratory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The myTAI_HEART^® test is available for use in post-transplant monitoring of pediatric and adult heart transplant patients. Dr. Michael Mitchell, a Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the Herma Heart Institute of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and Dr. Aoy Tomita-Mitchell, a Professor and researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin, are inventors of the technology and founders of TAI Diagnostics.

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