The TransMedics® Organ Care System (OCS™) Heart Technology Was Used to Perform The World's First Series of Adult Human Heart Transplants From Donors After Circulatory Death (DCD Donors) at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia

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Oct 24, 2014, 05:00 ET

ANDOVER, Mass., Oct. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- TransMedics announces that its OCS™ Heart technology was used to preserve and assess the world's first series of three successful adult heart transplant procedures from hearts donated from donors after circulatory death (DCD) by the St. Vincent's Hospital Heart Transplant team. All patients who received these groundbreaking transplants have recovered very well. This achievement represents a pivotal new milestone in heart transplantation worldwide, and it was carried out following pioneering basic and translational research undertaken by the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and St Vincent's Hospital using the OCS™ Heart technology.

These hearts were retrieved from donors whose hearts had stopped beating. Currently, these DCD donors are not considered for heart transplantation due to the limitations of cold storage preservation technique. These hearts were retrieved, resuscitated to a normal beating state and clinically assessed using the TransMedics OCS™ Heart technology. The OCS™ technology platform is the only medical device capable of maintaining donor organs in near physiologic and functioning state outside of the human body from the time the organ is removed from the donor until it is ready to be transplanted into a suitable recipient.

"The OCS™ Heart system was paramount to the success of this clinical milestone in heart transplantation as it enabled us to fully assess the donor heart function and metabolic state before transplantation," said Dr. Kumud Dhital, Prof. of Cardiothoracic Surgery at St. Vincent's Hospital and the lead surgeon who performed the DCD heart transplants.

"The ability to safely transplant a donor heart from DCD donors could be a paradigm shift to potentially increase the pool of viable donor hearts to help more patients suffering from end-stage heart failure," said Dr. Waleed Hassanein, President and CEO of TransMedics, Inc. "We are actively engaged in four large pivotal trials for hearts, lungs and livers in the U.S. to bring the revolutionary OCS™ technology to the U.S. market hopefully starting in 2015," said Dr. Hassanein.

What is the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS™)?

Since the advent of organ transplantation, the cornerstone of organ preservation has been cold ischemic storage (placing organs on ice). Although this method is intended to reduce the extent of organ damage during transport, significant deterioration of the donated organ still occurs. The longer the organ is kept on ice, the greater the damage. Moreover, the cold storage technique does not enable any resuscitative or assessment while the organ is being transported from donor to recipient. Given the limitations of cold storage, it is estimated that globally 60-65% of donor hearts cannot ultimately be used for transplantation.

TransMedics has developed the world's only portable medical device capable of overcoming the limitations of cold storage for organ transplantation. The OCS™ technology was designed to provide a comprehensive solution to all three key limitations of the cold storage technique, as it:

Minimizes cold ischemia injury by perfusing the heart with warm oxygenated blood;
Optimizes the condition of the organ by replenishing oxygen, nutrients, and hormones that would otherwise become depleted;
Provides continuous monitoring and assessment of the organ until the point of transplantation

These unique capabilities of the OCS technology have the potential to:

Increase utilization of current donor organs
Improve patient survival
Reduce post-transplant complications
Improve cost-effectiveness of the transplant procedure

About TransMedics, Inc.

TransMedics Inc. is the world's leader in portable ex-vivo machine perfusion and assessment of donor organs for transplantation. Headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, the company was founded to address the unmet need for more and better organs for transplantation. For more information, please visit www.TransMedics.com

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SOURCE TransMedics, Inc.