There are 103,200+ people waiting for an organ transplant in the US, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Massachusetts-based medical device company Paragonix Technologies is trying to make organs more accessible through its devices that look like boxes, which can transport hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, and pancreases over long distances.
For example, in May 2023, the company successfully transported a donor heart from Juneau, Alaska, to Boston, Massachusetts. The devices replace the more traditional ice boxes, instead using unique technology that considers variables specific to each organ type, like pumping fluids into kidneys and keeping lungs inflated.
Lisa Anderson—Paragonix’s co-founder, CEO, and president—spoke with Healthcare Brew about recent company developments as well as the company’s plans for the future.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Paragonix’s KidneyVault perfusion system just completed its first successful commercial flight. How might this make donor kidneys more accessible?
Previously, placing a perfusion device [which pumps fluid into the organ] like that on a commercial aircraft wasn’t really possible or feasible. When you think about moving organs around, and they often travel very large distances, it’s very important that technology fits into normal modes of transportation, like an ambulance, a commercial airliner, etc.
Our devices are all designed to sit in a passenger seat. They are literally buckled into a seat, and we generally have a guardian or a courier sitting with the technology to then take the device off the commercial airline and bring it to a transplant recipient. It’s all about buying more time so that we can move from very costly private charter to cost-effective commercial airlines.
In September 2024, Paragonix was acquired by medtech company Getinge. What does the acquisition mean for the future of the company? What are your long-term plans?
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This partnership and this acquisition really rings in a new phase for our entire mission. We now have the mandate to really build out our platform and build a transplant care business that is comprehensive. We’re going to focus on all organs—and organ transport, organ surgical recovery services—but we’ll also look for new innovation on the two patients that we always think about: the donor patient and the recipient patient.
We’re going to expand into technologies that make more organs available and let clinicians use more organs from additional donor pools. Also, we’re going to look at recipient management. How can we help and support transplant recipients once they’ve received that organ, and guarantee long-term survival and success of that organ?
What’s it like to have such a strong influence in the market for transplant transportation?
What is important to us as we see this market grow and expand is that we can help many, many transplant patients receive an organ. And what’s really interesting with our technologies is that we don’t really have direct competitors, other than we are replacing an old method, which was basically an ice bucket or ice cooler. But what’s great about our technology is that we are very often used in combination with other technologies to address specific, complex clinical situations. So from that standpoint, we encourage competition. We encourage new technology to arise…The more there is available in this space—the more the space grows—the more we can support the market and the patients we serve.