Aerea Medical Brings VitalMatch.ai Online for Transplant Research Teams
The platform puts donor data, imaging, and outcomes in a single workspace, built on the UNOS STAR registry.
MDC Studio portfolio company Aerea Medical has brought VitalMatch.ai online, a project-scoped research platform for organ-donor screening. The system gives a transplant research team cohort browsing, configurable DICOM de-identification, a 2D and 3D CT viewer, model training, and a Python SDK, all working on top of the UNOS STAR registry.
Lung transplant is the only life-extending option for patients with end-stage lung disease, and there are far more candidates than usable organs. Around 3,700 lung transplants are performed in the United States each year against roughly 1,200 deaths on the waiting list. The bottleneck sits at the moment of the offer: about 80% of donor lungs are declined, often on a subjective assessment made inside a 60 to 90 minute window, and roughly 30% of the transplants that do proceed develop primary graft dysfunction, the leading cause of early mortality.
VitalMatch.ai is built around a two-axis architecture. An organ-quality model works from clinical features and CT imaging. A second axis scores immunologic compatibility using PIRCHE-II donor and recipient HLA matching, delivered through an API partnership with Pirche Inc. To the best of the company's knowledge this is the first time PIRCHE-II mismatch scoring has been made available at the moment of offer for lung transplant. On a validated retrospective cohort, the calibrated late-fusion model reached an AUROC of 0.708, and results are returned inside the offer window through a UNOS-integrated dashboard.
The clinical team behind the work is led by Dr. Aldo Iacono, who directs the Lung Transplant Center at Northwell Health and is a Partner in the MDC Studio, with Dr. Jean Jeudy of University of Maryland radiology and Dr. Si Pham as surgical advisor. Aerea Medical has submitted a $2.35 million NIH NHLBI Catalyze R61/R33 application to fund a prospective clinical study at partner transplant centres.
The near-term deployment target is the roughly 65 lung-transplant centres in the United States, reached through UNOS integration and the Pirche.ai partner channel already used for HLA scoring. The same two-axis architecture is intended to extend to kidney, heart, and liver transplant, with a disease-specific quality axis for each.
About Aerea Medical
Aerea Medical develops technology for transplant medicine and emergency airway management. Alongside VitalMatch.ai the company is developing EO2, a handheld device for establishing an emergency airway, currently at engineering-prototype stage. Aerea Medical is a portfolio company of the MDC Studio.
About the MDC Studio
The MDC Studio is a MedTech startup studio in Baltimore, Maryland. It works with clinicians and engineers to turn ideas into working prototypes and into companies, providing engineering, business development, regulatory support, and shared laboratory and office space. The Studio is located in an Opportunity Zone at 300 West Pratt Street. Contact us for more information.