To protect the health of transplanted organs, a cutting-edge company raised tens of millions of dollars in Series A financing!

New name: TAI Diagnostics

Company coordinates: Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, USA

Official website: https://taidiagnostics.com/

Financing status: USD 10 million in Series A

Management Team: Company CEO: Mr. Frank Langley; Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer: Dr. Aoy Tomita-Mitchell; Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Advisor: Dr. Michael Mitchell

Recently, TAI Diagnostics, a cutting-edge diagnostic technology company, announced that it has completed Series A preferred equity financing and raised US$10 million in funds to focus on the development of "cell-free DNA (cfDNA)" detection technology to diagnose the health status of organ transplants.

As a cutting-edge biotechnology company, TAI Diagnostics specializes in providing non-invasive and highly sensitive diagnostic tests for organ transplantation with its patent-pending cfDNA assay to monitor the health of transplanted organs in patients receiving solid organ transplants.

In organ transplantation, rejection is an important reason that causes transplanted organ damage and affects patient outcomes. Routine monitoring of graft rejection is very necessary. Currently, the gold standard for monitoring organ rejection is tissue biopsy, but tissue biopsy is very invasive, risky for patients, prone to sampling site deviations, delays in diagnosing organ damage, and is expensive for patients and the healthcare system.

TAI's PCR-based cfDNA diagnostic technology only requires the detection of a small amount of blood samples and can directly assess transplant organ damage through quantitative genotyping analysis.

The inventors of this technology are Dr. Michael Mitchell, a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon at the Herma Heart Institute at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, and Dr. Aoy Tomita-Mitchell, a professor and researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin, both inventors and founders of TAI Diagnostics. The working principle behind it is based on: in the body of the transplant recipient (organ recipient), in addition to "self-specific cf-DNA", "donor-specific cf-DNA" also exists in the blood. Donor-specific cf-DNA is released from the transplanted organ, and the amount released increases with the degree of rejection damage, and has the genotype of the organ donor (organ donor), which is different from the transplant recipient's own genotype. This cutting-edge non-invasive cfDNA diagnosis is based on quantitative genotyping analysis, which can distinguish "self-specific" cf-DNA from "donor-specific" cf-DNA, thereby monitoring the health status of transplanted organs in real time.

cf-DNA detection can dynamically reflect the status of organ damage in real time from the nature of genetic molecules, which will improve the sensitivity and specificity of detection and help doctors and patients judge graft viability early and take rapid response measures.

TAI, a company with great potential in transplant organ health monitoring, has been sought after by high amounts of capital. The startup has raised more than US$21 million in cumulative financing since its inception, including the most recent US$8.2 million in Series A venture capital in 2015. The newly obtained equity financing will be mainly used to support ongoing cfDNA patent research and development projects, clinical research, and the development of soon-to-be-launched cfDNA monitoring products after organ transplantation.

In terms of development model, the upstart stated that it has reached a cooperation with United Therapeutics, another biotechnology company, to explore the use of cfDNA technology as a companion diagnosis to promote United Therapeutics to increase the high-quality supply of transplant organs.

Mr. Frank Langley, CEO of TAI Diagnostics (Photo source: TAI Diagnostics official website)

"United Therapeutics has demonstrated a strong leadership position in the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, and we believe it can also bring changes to the field of organ transplantation." Mr. Frank Langley, CEO of TAI, said:

Mr. Paul Mahon, Executive Vice President of United Therapeutics, said: "As we continue to advance the development goal of unlimited supply of transplant organs, graft monitoring has become an important area worthy of our attention, and TAI's leading cfDNA technology can exactly fill the field of graft monitoring."

References:

[1] TAI Diagnostics Closes $10M Series A Financing; Partners With United Therapeutics

[2] TAI Diagnostics official website

------From Sohu-Technology-"Chuangjianhui" (WeChat ID: Inno_Insight)