Aoy Tomita Mitchell is a busy woman. Both a tenured professor of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and the co-founder and chief scientific officer at TAI Diagnostics, most of her time is spent working to change the way patients receive heart transplants.
Mitchell originally founded TAI Diagnostics in 2013 with her husband Michael Mitchell, a pediatric heart surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. The startup provides DNA-based diagnostic testing to monitor the health of transplanted organs in patients.
TAI's lab test system, branded myTAIHeart, examines blood samples in heart transplant recipients as young as two months old to determine if they will reject it. The lab is at the Milwaukee County Research Park and TAI guarantees it can get physicians test results by the next business day.
“I am very fortunate to have a really incredible lab,” said Mitchell, who is also one of Wisconsin Inno’s 50 on Fire winners. “It’s a huge endeavor and really a collaborative effort.”
Before TAI Diagnostics’ tech, physicians generally had to perform an invasive endomyocardial biopsy to see how patients would respond to a transplanted heart. The procedure requires a wire to be threaded through an incision in the neck and down a vein to retrieve several small pieces of the heart.
Now, multiple healthcare systems nationwide use TAI Diagnostics’ technology, though Mitchell would not disclose how many or specific ones.
TAI raised $10 million at the beginning of this year to fund clinical trials, product development, marketing and hiring more laboratory employees.
“We added many very talented employees this year,” Mitchell said.
Since launching, TAI has raised $29 million from Venture Investors and Wisconsin Investment Partners, according to Crunchbase.
Looking ahead, Mitchell said TAI will continue to fuel its growth by hiring more lab personnel and attracting new clients.
“I think [Milwaukee] has a really dynamic, entrepreneurial and patient-centric culture,” Mitchell said. “It’s really exciting to have that here in Milwaukee.”
