TransMedics, Inc., headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, is a medical device company founded to address the unmet need for more and better organs for transplantation. The company has developed the Organ Care System (OCS), a first-in-class technology with the potential to improve outcomes for transplant patients and to dramatically increase the number of transplantable organs worldwide. The OCS technology is capable of maintaining donor organs in a near-physiological state outside the body from donor to recipient: the heart is beating, lungs are breathing, and liver is making bile. The portable technology was designed to be transported in all modes of transportation typically used for organ retrieval, to reduce the time-dependent damage associated with cold storage. Since the organ is in a functioning state, the OCS enables the transplant team to monitor and assess the organ ex-vivo and to potential improve the organ's condition before transplantation.
The OCS Heart and OCS Lung systems are CE-marked and in clinical use in transplant centers in Europe, Australia and Canada. The OCS Lung is FDA approved in the United States while the OCS Heart is undergoing FDA-approved clinical trials in the United States. The first liver transplantation using this technology (the OCS Liver System) took place in early 2016 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of the PROTECT Liver clinical trial.
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