The Memo: BMI OrganBank Is Advancing Room-Temperature Kidney Preservation

Under the direction of Co-Founder & CEO Carrie DiMarzio, BMI OrganBank is developing a new approach to organ preservation designed to give transplant teams more time and information between organ recovery and transplantation. The Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based company is advancing the OrganBank Kidney (OBK) System, a portable, automated, room-temperature preservation platform that combines continuous preservation with real-time organ viability data in a single end-to-end environment. The company’s goal is straightforward but ambitious: help every viable donated organ reach a patient.

Origin Story

For DiMarzio, BMI OrganBank began with both the potential of its underlying technology and a clear need within transplantation.

“I saw the potential of the technology and how urgently the transplant system needed a better approach to organ preservation,” she said. “I knew that if we brought the right scientific, clinical, and engineering expertise together, we could help close that gap.”

That opportunity led DiMarzio to co-found BMI OrganBank and commit to building the technology into a clinical platform. The company has developed its approach with firsthand knowledge of the transplant ecosystem, working with collaborators and co-inventors that include leading transplant surgeons, among them the co-director of Duke’s Ex Vivo Organ Lab.

“Once I understood what the technology could make possible, committing to build the company was an easy decision,” DiMarzio said. “This is the kind of problem worth spending years solving.”

The Current Landscape

More than 90,000 people in the United States are waiting for a kidney transplant, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, yet thousands of recovered kidneys are never transplanted each year.

Kidney preservation today relies primarily on static cold storage or hypothermic machine perfusion. Both approaches use cold temperatures to slow the organ’s metabolism, placing the kidney in a suppressed metabolic state during perfusion. These approaches limit the amount of time an organ is sustained outside of the body and affect how far a kidney can travel and how thoroughly it can be evaluated. This requires surgeons to make time-sensitive decisions with limited organ viability data, which can contribute to recovered kidneys going unused.

“As the decision window narrows, transplant teams are left with an incomplete picture and may ultimately decline an organ they cannot assess with sufficient confidence,” DiMarzio explained.

BMI OrganBank is pursuing a different model, one intended to maintain the kidney in a metabolically active state outside the body while providing transplant teams with continuous data about the organ during preservation.

Inside their Innovative Technology 

At the center of BMI OrganBank’s approach is the OrganBank Kidney System. Rather than relying on cold/hypothermic preservation to suppress metabolic activity, the platform uses room-temperature preservation. 

The room-temperature environment is designed to allow organ cells to maintain their metabolic activity through its proprietary pulse generator, creating a physiological heartbeat, which enables the cells to take in nutrients, electrolytes, and oxygen needed to support preservation. OrganBank Kidney’s portable system provides these benefits without requiring blood, avoiding logistical complexity and cost. 

The platform is designed as an end-to-end system. Preservation begins at the point of organ procurement, and the kidney remains within the same controlled environment throughout transport. This continuity is intended to minimize ischemic injury while supporting more predictable transplant logistics. 

The company’s extensive preclinical auto-transplant studies validate this approach. In a head-to-head porcine study, BMI OrganBank reported no delayed graft function in the OrganBank Kidney group, compared with 40% in the group preserved using hypothermic machine perfusion. Additional studies support OrganBank Kidney preserving kidneys for 72 hours with stable perfusion parameters. 

“What sets BMI OrganBank apart is our ability to translate a fundamentally different preservation approach into a fully automated perfusion platform designed to deliver scalable, best-in-class preservation from the point of recovery to transplantation,” DiMarzio said.

Progress and Milestones

BMI OrganBank received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in July 2025. The company is pursuing a human clinical study expected in 2027, pending FDA approval.

The company has completed a GLP animal study using its production-equivalent OrganBank Kidney platform with its proprietary DEVOL perfusate solution. Other recent milestones include receiving the 2026 Luis Villalobos Award in Life Sciences from the Angel Capital Association and DiMarzio’s selection as a 2026 Aspen Ideas: Health Fellow.

On the financing front, BMI OrganBank is closing an oversubscribed $6 million seed round, and the company has begun conversations for a planned Series A offering.

Kidneys are just the beginning. BMI OrganBank is adapting the OrganBank platform for other abdominal organs, including the liver, pancreas, and intestine, while also developing research platforms for limb and whole-eye preservation.

As DiMarzio prepares to attend LSI USA ’27, the company’s focus is on beginning series A discussions and preparing OrganBank Kidney for clinical trials.

“My priority at LSI is to connect with investors and strategic partners who understand what it takes to bring new medical technologies into clinical use and can support our next stage of growth,” DiMarzio said. 

Join Us at LSI USA ’27

DiMarzio has been selected to present at LSI USA ’27, March 15th–19th, in front of hundreds of global medical technology companies. Join us in welcoming her to the event in Dana Point, CA, where she will share the latest updates on BMI OrganBank’s technology and development.