It was late at night and Stan was violently ill, his wife quickly threw him in the car and sped to their local hospital outside of Boston. Counting every mile, Stan didn’t know if he would make it. He was scared about his blood pressure. It had been 6 years since Stan’s kidney transplant, and this wasn’t the first time he had been sick. Shortly after his transplant, Stan had realized that his doct
ors were essentially flying blind, waiting for him to get sick then reacting with medicines and biopsies. He could be in rejection right now and had no idea. That’s when Stan started researching. He found an article on biomarkers in transplantation that was eye opening. But none of this new knowledge had yet been applied to keeping kidney transplant patients healthy. So he called Dr. Michael Abecassis, a leading doctor in the transplant field. It turned out that Dr. Abecassis and the late Dr. Solomon had been working for the past 10 years to create a noninvasive alternative to a surveillance biopsy. Through the use of genomics, they were developing a test that measures biomarkers in your blood to reveal what is happening inside of you. Stan asked Dr. Abecassis about using this genomic test on him. His creatinine had been slowly rising over the past months and he didn’t know if he should be worried about rejection. Using their blood-based test, the results came back showing no signs of rejection in Stan’s blood, suggesting that his drugs were causing the issues. His doctors were able to intervene before his precious, donated kidney was damaged, and without another biopsy. Stan spent his career in the biotechnology executive and serial entrepreneur, and had retired years before. But knowing how this test could personally change his life as well as the lives of thousands of transplant patients, Stan felt compelled to return to work to find a solution to get the blood-based TruGraf test to the public. He asked the doctors if he could help them build a company and a properly certified laboratory to make these tests accessible to all. Stan, Dr. Abecassis, and Dr. Dan Salomon created Transplant Genomics Inc. (TGI), a molecular diagnostics company committed to improving organ transplant outcomes through the use of a simple blood test called TruGraf that could be run at any time to give an early warning sign as to whether or not a patient might be silently rejecting – early enough to intervene with proactive corrective action so that patients could live in peace about their kidney’s health. TruGraf provides a first step towards improving long term outcomes through personalized immunosuppression. The blood-based TruGraf test is now available to patients in select centers around the nation, mostly in conjunction with ongoing clinical studies, with plans to expand availability once Medicare and commercial insurance companies provide coverage as TGI simply can’t afford to subsidize testing for all who need it. But pushing new medical discoveries to the front lines of insurance coverage and government regulatory approval is difficult. It could take years! Stan & Dr. Abecassis understand that patients don’t have years to wait. There is a high demand for a noninvasive approach to kidney health now. The current options given post transplant are unsatisfactory and intolerable. The goals of TGI’s page is to share stories of kidney transplant recipients to generate a ground swell of interest in the TruGraf test. We want to empower you to talk to your transplant coordinators and doctors today about TruGraf blood test. Your voices can bring this test to your transplant program and improve transplant outcomes for thousands of people. Raise your voice. Be informed about your kidney’s health.
