Have Bloodwork Draws Performed Easily and Reliably at Home 

To ensure transplant patient health and safety and to help physicians continue to provide state-of-the-art care for their patients without requiring them to visit the transplant center, community practice, or commercial laboratory, Transplant Genomics offers a comprehensive catalog of tests – all of which can be run from samples collected remotely – via our mobile phlebotomy service, Labs@HOME.

The Labs@HOME service allows physicians to order and customize a limited menu of infectious disease and transplant-related testing. The specimen collection is performed safely and securely by a qualified phlebotomist who will work with the patient to schedule an appointment at the patient’s residence.

Immunocompromised Patients Can Avoid Unnecessary Visits to Medical Facilities

Typical protocols for the management of transplant recipients have required immunocompromised patients to make regular visits to healthcare facilities, where there may be a risk of exposure to infectious agents. At the same time, clinicians understand that the lack of adequate surveillance poses an even greater risk to their patients’ health. Labs@HOME enables the necessary blood samples to be collected at home, helping patients to avoid the added risk of a clinic visit.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, this risk is particularly prevalent. As our healthcare networks become increasingly stressed with Coronavirus patients, transplant patients may be unable to return to the hospital for routine and specialized post-transplant testing and management. These immunosuppressed and immunocompromised patients are already at risk for transplant rejection due to infection or graft failure and subsequently fall into the high-risk category for COVID-19. 

While transplant patients are being urged to stay at home and avoid visiting clinics for routine blood draws or surveillance biopsies, regular use of Labs@HOME minimizes the risk to the patient and reduces load at hospitals where resources are devoted to COVID-19 care.

Customize Testing for Allograft Monitoring, COVID-19, and Other Infectious Diseases

Infectious disease and transplant-related testing assays available through Labs@HOME include:

• TruGraf® Blood Gene Expression Test
  • TruGraf is the only blood test approved by CMS for surveillance to rule out “silent” subclincal acute rejection in stable kidney transplant recipients and provide assurance that patients are likely to be immune quiescent.
• Viracor TRAC™ Kidney dd-cfDNA
  • TRAC™ analyzes donor-derived cell-free-DNA levels in blood to rule out rejection in patients already suspected of rejecting.
• Coronavirus (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2 Test
  • We now offer active infection testing for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in transplant donors and recipients, using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing with same or next day results.
  • COVID-19 testing is available with a self-pay price for patients who do not have health insurance or for those who intentionally choose not to submit a claim to their insurance company. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2 PCR self-pay price is $100. Additional charges may apply for specimen collection, logistics or expedited turnaround testing.
• Cytomegalovirus T Cell Immunity Panel
  • Cytomegalovirus (CMV) can affect patients with weakened immune systems and is a common risk factor in patients following solid organ transplant. The CMV T Cell Immunity Panel measures the strength of T cell responses to CMV specific antigens.
• Cytomegalovirus Quantitative Real-time PCR
  • A frequent complication after transplantation, Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection may cause a series of direct and indirect effects that lead to increased incidence of graft rejection, opportunistic infections, and decreased allograft and patient survival.1,2 Symptomatic CMV disease in immunocompromised individuals can affect almost every organ of the body, resulting in fever, pneumonia, hepatitis, encephalitis, myelitis, colitis, uveitis, retinitis, and neuropathy.
• BK Virus (BKV) Quantitative Real-time PCR
  • The BKV test is designed to detect all strains of BK Virus. The primers and probes used in this assay are specific for all known BKV strains based on similarity search algorithms.
• Donor-specific Antibodies Identification
  • Donor-specific antibodies (DSAs) identified before kidney transplant (preformed DSAs) can cause accelerated acute rejection, early acute antibody-mediated rejection, and graft loss. De novo developed DSAs after transplant are associated with late acute antibody-mediated rejection, chronic antibody-mediated rejection, and transplant glomerulopathy.

By providing this specialty service for the transplant community, Labs@HOME enables Transplant Genomics to help these critical patients in an integral time post-transplant in the wake of a rapidly changing healthcare situation.