PROOF’s Biomarkers in Transplantation (BiT) program focuses on applying a novel multi-gene blood test to the management of acute cardiac allograft rejection, with the end goal of improving patient management while reducing the need for biopsies. We have recently developed a promising test of acute rejection comprising 9 RNA biomarkers (HEARTBiT) using data from 150 Canadian heart transplant patients. This grant will enable us to evaluate the new test on 400 patients from 5 North American transplant centres, and this work will provide the basis for a future clinical trial. Our objective is to provide a tool to quickly identify acute cardiac rejection in an accurate, cost-effective, and minimally invasive manner, allowing for uncomplicated long-term monitoring and therapy tailoring for heart transplant patients.

Congratulations to Drs. McManus, Ng, and Tebbutt, and the rest of the PROOF Team!

Congratulations as well to the other CIHR grant recipients from this round of competition. Click here to see the results from the Fall 2017 competition.

$2.18M CIHR project grant awarded for clinical validation of HEARTBiT