“This is next-generation sequencing,” says CareDx CEO Peter Maag. “It’s really the future in Diagnostics. We are applying this technology to match an organ with the recipient on a very granular level. We do that in organ transplantation, in bone marrow transplantation, and in transplantation overall. Now in the post-transplant area, we can actually detect the DNA of the transplanted organ in the bloodstream of the recipient. That’s a very novel technology.”

Peter Maag, CEO of CareDx, discusses how their revolutionary AI-powered sequencing technology is extending the lives of organ transplant recipients and is the future in medical diagnostics. Maag was interviewed on Bloomberg Technology:

AI-Powered Sequencing Technology Is The Future In Medical Diagnostics

There are really two big issues in organ transplantation. On the one hand, you need to match an organ to a recipient. After transplantation, you need to care for that patient throughout the lifetime of that patient. We are applying very novel sequencing technology for matching the organ with the recipient. After that, we’re using the same sequencing technology to care for these patients detecting rejection episodes early and making sure that clinicians have the information to treat patients and to prevent rejection episodes from occurring in the past.

This is next-generation sequencing. It’s really the future in Diagnostics. We are applying this technology to match an organ with the recipient on a very granular level. We do that in organ transplantation, in bone marrow transplantation, and in transplantation overall. Now in the post-transplant area, we can actually detect the DNA of the transplanted organ in the bloodstream of the recipient. That’s a very novel technology. The cell-free DNA technology is revolutionizing how we can care for patients because it detects rejection episodes earlier. When you add on this an artificial intelligence platform that allows clinicians to have a deeper insight in aggregating all the various data streams, it allows them to make better decisions and potentially detect issues much earlier than they can do today.

Clear Focus To Improve Patients Lives By 3 Years

We have a very clear focus as an organization to improve patients lives by three years. We’re very early in the ability to impact this but we are building an amazing platform at CareDX in order to do so. We can focus on immune modulation. We can focus on adherence and compliance and making sure that patients are actually taking their meds and seeing their doctors on a regular interval.

Afterward, we also can focus on standardization and precision medicine, individualizing the care that the individual patient receives. The perfect care for that individual patient is really what we’re all about at CareDX. We’re applying precision medicine tools to the field of transplantation. We have built a tremendous platform to deliver and partner with the transplant ecosystem to make that available to transplant patients.

A $2 Billion Market Opportunity

This is really an amazing growth story. We have built this tremendous platform in transplant medicine. Over the last 18 months, we have already achieved five percent patient penetration in kidney transplant patients in the U.S. We see this as a $2 billion market opportunity. When we talked about this $2 billion market opportunity four or five years ago people were wondering, why is that? The reason is that these transplant patients really live for 10 to 15 years and there’s a recurring revenue opportunity for us on testing these patients throughout the lifetime of the patient.

So CareDX has a model that follows these patients over a very long period of time, which financially is very attractive. But much more important, we are changing patients lives by making sure that we are detecting rejection episodes early. This is scientifically very interesting.

AI Platform Will Role Out Into Many Other Areas

You have on the one hand or transplantation is a unique opportunity in the context of being at the pinnacle of medical science. Some have called it the miracle of medicine. It truly is. If you think about it, innovation really happens at the top of the innovation curve. If you have innovation at the top of the pyramid this will allow us to learn a lot for other areas.

We are doing now in transplantation about the top 200 medical centers in the United States that are doing transplantation. Once we have built an ecosystem that allows us to have artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence relationships with these centers and integrate into electronic medical records we can role that platform out into many other areas.