ProCure On-Demand celebrates milestone with 500th transplanted organ

ProCure On-Demand's 500^th transplanted organ, being announced today, is emblematic of the gaps and inefficiencies in the current transplant system that the organ recovery, technology and logistics company is regularly solving.

The case involving the transplant of the 500th organ underscores ProCure's reputation for quality work, efficient logistics and swift turnaround times, which have become integral to their success. With less than five hours to recover bilateral lungs, ProCure tapped into its unique Recovery Team Network, to deploy a surgeon within seven miles from the donor hospital. Soon after, the lungs were on a 700-mile flight and transplanted into a recipient.

Within a day of the transplant, the recipient of the gift of new lungs was breathing on their own and was able to get back home to continue healing within a few weeks.

This case represents a new paradigm in organ recovery that has been created and replicated by ProCure. The November 2024 milestone comes at a propitious time: the national organ donation system is undergoing historic modernization in an effort to hit the goal of 60,000 transplants by 2026.

It's a significant milestone for the New York-based Public Benefit Corporation, founded by two innovative transplant surgeons.

Co-founder and CEO, Dr. Zachary Kon is best known as the surgeon who first performed Normothermic Regional Perfusion (NRP) for the purpose of organ donation in the U.S. Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bartley Griffith is a pioneer in the field of xenotransplantation. The mission of the company is to increase the quality and quantity of organs available for transplantation.

These 500 transplants chip away at the unacceptably long organ wait list, but does so in ways no one has tried. The first step in an organ transplant is recovering the organ from the donor. This step is critical but has been historically under-valued and under-resourced."

Dr. Zachary Kon, co-founder, CEO, ProCure On-Demand

Since its launch, ProCure has rapidly expanded to serve the nationwide transplant community. Its Recovery Team is made up of locally-dispersed abdominal and thoracic surgeons in 24 states, as well as Certified Clinical Perfusionists, first assistants, and other credentialled recovery personnel who strive to better the community by professionalizing the recovery process like never before.

Reaching the milestone is also attributable to ProCure's meticulous operational staff which elevates the recovery process, as well as the company's flexible model. The model allows a transplant center or an Organ Procurement Organization to cover variable gaps in their recovery, supplies, transportation or technology usage by calling on ProCure to perform all components of every recovery mission – or just one component where they need support. This comprehensive offering deployed in a bespoke manner has allowed ProCure to save over $5 million for its customers to date.

These five hundred transplanted organs are the result of many more recovery missions, because not every mission results in an organ being transplanted. However, it is important that every mission happens in a high-quality manner, as efficiently as possible. The assessment of more organs will lead to more organs being made available for transplant. Some examples of ProCure missions that resulted in successful organ transplants last year include:

1. Too far away doesn't exist. The lungs had to get from a donor in Anchorage to a recipient in Boston. But with no recovery surgeon available, a ProCure surgeon took a 5.5-hour direct flight from Los Angeles, performed the 2am surgery and the lungs were on the way to Boston by 7am. Had the ProCure surgeon not been available, the healthy lungs would have been wasted.
2. No organ is too small, no task too large. A New York-based ProCure thoracic surgeon stepped in to manage and perform a tricky recovery in a tragic case; a heart from a <4 kg. baby. Not only did the ProCure surgeon recover the walnut-sized heart but then assisted the abdominal surgeon in recovering the tiny kidneys. The collaboration in the OR ensured at least two pediatric patients would receive life-saving organs and that the donor family's gifts were maximized.
3. Flexibility to cover gaps. ProCure brings surgeons to cover staffing gaps to ensure that organs are recovered even when no staff surgeon is available. Recently, ProCure repositioned surgeons to an Organ Procurement Organization's (OPO) area to cover for staff that were on leave. ProCure surgeons recovered 24 kidneys, 5 livers and 2 pancreases that went on to be transplanted.
4. Taking the middle seat in the nick of time. One of ProCure's west-coast based abdominal surgeons was needed to recover a pair of kidneys. With minimal turnaround time, ProCure's Coordination team was able to book a commercial flight to get the team there quickly, recovering both kidneys – and saving the client over $10,000.
5. Creating capacity for more transplants. With ProCure On-Demand performing its' recoveries, one growing heart transplant program has been able to nearly triple its volume from last year, helping more patients on the wait list.

ProCure's co-founder and CMO, Dr. Bartley Griffith concludes, "ProCure is building a vast, regional network of trusted, highly-credentialed surgeons and other recovery professionals and ensuring they have access to the latest recovery-related training. By offering a model where the team is geographically closer to the donor and introducing a new approach to transportation and logistics that removes excessive costs and inefficiencies, we are making progress towards our goal of significantly impacting the waste and unprofessionalism that plagues our field."