Retham Technologies™ LLC was established in 2017 to translate recent discoveries into a life-saving in vitro diagnostic (IVD) assay that provides earlier and more accurate in-hospital diagnosis of Heparin-induced Thrombocytopenia (HIT).

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HIT is a serious adverse reaction to the blood thinner heparin. It is characterized by a drop in platelet count (thrombocytopenia) and in ~1/3rd of cases, causes blood clotting (thrombosis) that can result in life-and-limb threatening consequences such as amputation, stroke and death.  The diagnosis of HIT is challenging.  A family of easy-to-run tests called PF4 ELISAs is performed in the hospital laboratory but have high false positive rates, i.e. many patients positive for antibodies to PF4:polyanion complexes do not have clinical HIT.  A second test, the Serotonin release assay (SRA), is considered the “gold-standard” test for HIT; but, it is performed only at a handful of laboratories nationally on a small fraction of suspected cases due to technical complexity, cost and turnaround time concerns. Thus, >90% of HIT suspected patients are currently managed using PF4 ELISAs, and thousands of patients receive costly non-heparin anticoagulant therapy due to “false positive” diagnoses.  These alternative anticoagulants have a worse bleeding risk profile relative to heparin often resulting in severe or fatal hemorrhage.

 

Retham Technologies™ is developing HITDx™, an IVD assay for early and accurate near-patient HIT diagnosis that is expected to facilitate timely and appropriate therapy thereby leading to better outcomes.