Indiana startup rescuing donated kidneys
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMore than 1,000 Hoosiers are on the organ transplant list, according to the Indiana Donor Network, and a startup at the Purdue Research Park is on a mission to help people waiting for a new kidney.
CEO Chris Jaynes and Chief Commercial Officer Kathleen St. Jean co-founded 34 Lives. It’s a reference to the 34 people each day who are removed from the transplant waiting list because they got too sick or died waiting.
“Our mission and our vision is in our name,” St. Jean said. “What we fight for every day are those people that we’re trying to save.”
More than 8,000 kidneys are discarded each year. A kidney can only be out of the body for 20 hours until it’s deemed unusable.
“These are kidneys that have been completely rejected by every transplant hospital in the United States. They’ve gone through the entire list and everyone has said no. We are bringing them back into the system,” Jaynes said.
“We’re honoring the gift. We’re ensuring this kidney gets one last chance to get placed and to save a life,” St. Jean said. “When every kidney comes in the door to us, we treat it as if it’s a life.”
34 Lives has developed a pump system that they describe as a life support system. The donated kidney is warmed up to body temperature, essentially resetting the clock and giving it an additional 24 hours.
“With our pump system, we actually give the kidney the right nutrition. We give it the food and energy that it needs that it would normally have inside the body,” Jaynes said. “When it’s warm, it starts working just like it was still inside the body. It’s almost like we trick it.”
Twenty-one people—most of them Hoosiers—now have kidneys from 34 Lives implanted by IU Health Transplant Surgeon Dr. William Goggins. The first transplant happened in April.
Sylvia Miles of Greenwood spent five years on the transplant list before receiving a kidney from 34 Lives.
“I appreciate everything they’ve done for me. They gave me a second chance. I can’t be more grateful,” Miles said. “I feel so amazing. I have so much energy.”
The work continues for the team at 34 Lives, and last month the company received a $44 million grant from The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.
“In our current state, all we do is rescue kidneys; we don’t make them better,” St. Jean said. “ARPA-H allows us now to scale and actually start taking kidneys where we can make a difference and make them possibly better.”
The Purdue University Airport is also giving the company a lift.
“Right now, we can go wheels up at 2 or 3 in the morning and there’s no disruption. We’ve got planes coming in all night,” St. Jean said.
ARPA-H says 34 Lives’ technology may also be able to extend to other organs.