CareDx (CDNA) Risk Analysis

Due to the historically limited monitoring options and the well-established coverage and reimbursement for biopsies, clinicians are accustomed to monitoring for acute rejection in kidney and heart transplant recipients by utilizing biopsies. Many clinicians use AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare and AlloSure Lung in parallel with biopsies rather than as an alternative to biopsies. While we do not market AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare or AlloSure Lung as biopsy alternatives, per se, if treatment center administrators view our test as an alternative to a biopsy but believe they would derive more revenue from the performance of biopsies, such administrators may be motivated to reduce or avoid the use of our test. While biopsies are less common for monitoring kidney transplant patients, there are transplant centers that manage patients with protocol biopsies, which could impact AlloSure Kidney revenue. We cannot provide assurance that our efforts will increase the use of our test by new or existing customers. Our failure to increase the frequency of use of our test by new and existing customers would adversely affect our growth and revenues.

Clinicians and healthcare administrators are traditionally slow to adopt new products, testing practices and clinical treatments, partly because of perceived liability risks and the uncertainty of third-party reimbursement. It is critical to the success of our sales efforts that we continue to educate clinicians, administrators and laboratory directors about our testing services, products and patient and digital solutions, and demonstrate the clinical and diagnostic benefits of these services, products and patient and digital solutions. We believe that clinicians, transplant centers and laboratories may not use our services, products and patient and digital solutions unless they determine, based on published peer-reviewed journal articles, the experience of other clinicians or laboratory verification, that our services, products and patient and digital solutions provide accurate, reliable and cost-effective information that is useful in pre-transplant matching and monitoring their post-transplant recipients. Our product kits are sold to hundreds of laboratories, mainly in Europe and the U.S. Laboratories order our products based on the accuracy, speed and cost of the test together with the cost and availability of equipment on which to run the test. Switching to or adopting our products may require the purchase of new and costly testing equipment. To attract new laboratory customers, the performance of our products must provide performance or cost advantages over similar products sold by our competitors. If clinicians, hospital administrators and laboratories do not adopt or continue to use our tests and products or our future solutions and tests, our business and financial results will suffer.

The field of diagnostic testing in transplantation is evolving. Although there have been few advances in technology relating to organ rejection in transplant recipients, the market for medical diagnostic companies is marked by rapid and substantial technological development and innovations that could make AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare, AlloSure Lung, and our other products and patient and digital solutions, including those in development, outdated. We must continually innovate, expand and update our test offerings to address unmet needs in monitoring transplant-related conditions. AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare, AlloSure Lung, and our other products and patient and digital solutions, including those in development, could become obsolete unless we continually innovate, enhance and expand our product offerings to include new clinical applications. If we are unable to demonstrate the effectiveness of AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare, AlloSure Lung, or our other products and patient and digital solutions and future diagnostic solutions and tests, if any, compared to new methodologies and technologies, then sales of our tests, products and patient and digital solutions could decline, which would harm our business and financial results.

Key elements of our strategy are to discover, develop, validate and commercialize a portfolio of new diagnostic solutions. We cannot be sure that we will be able to successfully complete development of or commercialize any of our planned future solutions, or that they will prove to be capable of reliably being used for organ surveillance in the heart or in other types of organs. Before we can successfully develop and commercialize any of our currently planned or other new diagnostic solutions, we will need to: - conduct substantial research and development;- obtain the necessary testing samples and related data;- conduct clinical validation studies;- expend significant funds;- expand and scale-up our laboratory processes;- expand and train our sales force;- gain acceptance from ordering clinicians at a larger number of transplant centers;- gain acceptance from ordering laboratories associated with transplant centers; and - seek and obtain regulatory clearance or approvals of our new solutions, as required by applicable regulations. We have included a discussion of a number of anticipated targets in the reports we filed with the SEC. The actual timing of accomplishment of these targets could vary dramatically compared to our estimates, in some cases for reasons beyond our control. We cannot be certain that we will meet our projected targets and if we do not meet these targets as publicly announced, the commercialization of our diagnostic solutions may be delayed or may not occur at all and, as a result, our business will suffer and our stock price may decline. This process involves a high degree of risk and may take up to several years or more. Our test development and commercialization efforts may be delayed or fail for many reasons, including: - failure of the test at the research or development stage;- difficulty in accessing suitable testing samples, especially testing samples with known clinical results;- delays resulting from the failure of third-party suppliers or contractors to meet their obligations in a timely and cost-effective manner; or - failure to obtain or maintain necessary clearances or approvals to market the test. In addition, the publication of clinical data in peer-reviewed publications is necessary to promote clinician adoption and favorable reimbursement decisions. Clinicians typically take a significant amount of time to adopt new products, testing practices and clinical treatments, partly because of perceived liability risks and the uncertainty of third-party reimbursement. It is critical to the success of our sales efforts that we educate a sufficient number of clinicians and administrators about AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare, AlloSure Lung and our future solutions, and demonstrate the clinical benefits of these solutions. If our solutions fail to gain commercial acceptance by patients, clinicians or third-party payers, our business and results of operations would be negatively affected. The administration of clinical and economic utility studies is expensive and demands significant attention from our management team. Data collected from these studies may not be positive or consistent with our existing data, or may not be statistically significant or compelling to the medical community. If the results obtained from our ongoing or future studies are inconsistent with certain results obtained from our previous studies, adoption of our current and future products and patient and digital solutions would suffer and our business would be harmed. Few research and development projects result in commercial products, and success in early clinical studies often is not replicated in later studies. At any point, we may abandon development of new diagnostic solutions, or we may be required to expend considerable resources repeating clinical trials, which would adversely impact the timing for generating potential revenues from those new diagnostic solutions. In addition, as we develop diagnostic solutions, we will have to make additional investments in our sales and marketing operations, which may be prematurely or unnecessarily incurred if the commercial launch of a test is abandoned or delayed. If a clinical validation study fails to demonstrate the prospectively defined endpoints of the study, we would likely abandon the development of the test or test feature that was the subject of the clinical trial, which could harm our business.

As is commonplace in our industry, we employ individuals who were previously employed at other diagnostics, medical device, life sciences or pharmaceutical companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. Although we try to ensure that our employees do not use the proprietary information of others in the course of their work for us and no claims against us are currently pending, we may be subject to claims that these employees have inadvertently or otherwise used or disclosed trade secrets or other proprietary information of their former employers. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims. We may also be forced to bring claims against third parties or defend against third-party claims in order to determine the ownership of our intellectual property. An adverse result in the prosecution or defense of any such claims could require us to pay substantial monetary damages and could result in the loss of valuable intellectual property rights or personnel. Even if we are successful in prosecuting or defending against these claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management.

AlloMap, AlloSure, Olerup SSP, QTYPE, Ottr and CareDx are registered trademarks of our company in the United States. Our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names may be challenged, infringed, circumvented, declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks. As a means to enforce our trademark rights and prevent infringement, we may be required to file trademark claims against third parties or initiate trademark opposition proceedings. This process can be expensive, particularly for a company of our size, and time-consuming. In addition, in an infringement proceeding, a court may decide that a trademark of ours is not valid or is unenforceable, or may refuse to stop the other party from using the trademark at issue. We may not be able to protect our rights to these and other trademarks and trade names which we need to build name recognition by potential partners or customers in our markets of interest. Over the long-term, if we are unable to establish name recognition based on our trademarks and trade names, then we may not be able to compete effectively and our business may be adversely affected.

In addition to seeking patents for some of our technologies and solutions, we also rely on trade secrets, including unpatented know-how, technology and other proprietary information, to maintain our competitive position. We seek to protect these trade secrets, in part, by entering into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with parties who have access to them, such as our employees, corporate collaborators, outside scientific collaborators, contract manufacturers, consultants, advisors and other third parties. We also enter into confidentiality and invention or patent assignment agreements with our employees and consultants that obligate them to assign to us any inventions developed in the course of their work for us. However, we cannot be certain that we have executed these agreements with each party that may have or have had access to our trade secrets or that the agreements we have executed will provide adequate protection. Despite these efforts, any of these parties may breach the agreements and disclose our proprietary information, including our trade secrets, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. Monitoring unauthorized disclosure is difficult and we do not know whether the procedures we have followed to prevent such disclosure are, or will be, adequate. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or misappropriated a trade secret is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, some courts inside and outside the United States may be less willing or unwilling to protect trade secrets. If any of the technology or information that we protect as trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor, we would have no right to prevent them from using that technology or information to compete with us. If any of our trade secrets were to be disclosed to, or independently developed by, a competitor, our competitive position would be harmed.

Filing, prosecuting, defending and enforcing patents on all of our technologies and solutions throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive. As a result, we seek to protect our proprietary position by filing patent applications in the United States and in select foreign jurisdictions and cannot guarantee that we will obtain the patent protection necessary to protect our competitive position in all major markets. Competitors may use our technologies or solutions in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and, further, may export infringing products to territories where we have patent protection but where enforcement is not as strong as that in the United States. These products may compete with our current and future products in jurisdictions where we do not have any issued patents, and our patent claims or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from so competing. Many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions. The legal systems of certain countries, particularly certain developing countries, do not favor the enforcement of patents and other intellectual property protection, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of our patents or the marketing of competing products in violation of our proprietary rights generally. Further, the legal systems of certain countries make it difficult or impossible to obtain patent protection for diagnostic solutions. Proceedings to enforce our patent rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial costs and could divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of our business.

In the event we determine that a party is infringing our intellectual property rights, we may try to negotiate a license arrangement with such party or we may determine to initiate a lawsuit against such party. The process of negotiating a license with a third-party can be lengthy, and may take months or even years in some circumstances. In addition, it is possible that third parties who we believe are infringing our intellectual property rights are unwilling to license our intellectual property from us on terms we can accept, or at all. See Note 8, Commitments and Contingencies, to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q under the caption "Litigation and Indemnification Obligations," which is incorporated herein by reference, for a discussion of our recently completed and ongoing litigation with Natera. The decision to commence litigation over infringement of a patent is complex and may lead to several risks to us, including the following, among others: - the time, significant expense and distraction to management of managing such litigation;- the uncertainty of litigation and its potential outcomes;- the possibility that in the course of such litigation, the defendant may challenge the validity of our patents, which could result in a re-examination or post grant review of our patents and the possibility that the claims in our patents may be limited in scope or invalidated altogether;- the potential that the defendant may successfully persuade a court that its technology or products do not infringe our intellectual property rights;- the impact of such litigation on other licensing relationships we have or seek to establish, including the timing of renewing or entering into such relationships, as applicable, as well as the terms of such relationships;- the potential that a defendant may assert counterclaims against us; and - adverse publicity to us or harm to relationships we have with customers or others.

We may in the future receive offers to license patents or notices of claims of infringement, misappropriation or misuse of other parties' proprietary rights. We may also initiate claims to defend our intellectual property. Intellectual property litigation, regardless of outcome, is unpredictable, expensive and time-consuming, could divert management's attention from our business and have a material negative effect on our business, operating results or financial condition. If there is a successful claim of infringement against us, we may be required to pay substantial damages (including treble damages if we were to be found to have willfully infringed a third-party's patent) to the party claiming infringement, develop non-infringing technology, stop selling our test or using technology that contains the allegedly infringing intellectual property or enter into royalty or license agreements that may not be available on acceptable or commercially practical terms, if at all. Our failure to develop non-infringing technologies or license the proprietary rights on a timely basis could harm our business. In addition, revising our current or future solutions to exclude any infringing technologies would require us to re-validate the test, which would be costly and time-consuming. Also, we may be unaware of pending patent applications that relate to our current or future solutions. Parties making infringement claims on future issued patents may be able to obtain an injunction that would prevent us from selling our current or future solutions or using technology that contains the allegedly infringing intellectual property, which could harm our business. See Note 8, Commitments and Contingencies, to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q under the caption "Litigation and Indemnification Obligations," which is incorporated herein by reference, for a discussion of our recently completed and ongoing litigation with Natera.

We are subject to the CLIA, a federal law that regulates clinical laboratories that perform testing on specimens taken from humans for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of disease. If our laboratory is out of compliance with the CLIA requirements, we may be subject to sanctions such as suspension, limitation or revocation of our CLIA certificate, as well as a direct plan of correction, state on-site monitoring, civil money penalties, civil injunctive suit or criminal penalties. We must maintain the CLIA compliance and certification to be eligible to bill for services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. If we were to be found to be out of compliance with the CLIA program requirements and subjected to sanction, our business could be materially harmed. Licensure is also required for our laboratory under California law in order to conduct testing. California laws establish standards for day-to-day operation of our clinical laboratory, including the training and skills required of personnel and quality control. Moreover, several states, including New York, require that we hold licenses to test specimens from patients residing in those states. Other states have similar requirements or may adopt similar requirements in the future. In addition to our California certifications, we currently hold licenses in Florida, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The loss of any of these state certifications would impact our ability to provide services in those states, which could negatively affect our business. Finally, we may be subject to regulation in foreign jurisdictions where we offer our test. Failure to maintain certification in those states or countries where it is required could prevent us from testing samples from those states or countries, could lead to the suspension or loss of licenses, certificates or authorizations, and could have an adverse effect on our business. We were inspected as part of the customary College of American Pathologists audit and recertified in 2024 as a result of passing that inspection. We expect the next regular inspection under the CLIA to occur in 2026. If we were to lose our CLIA accreditation or California license, whether as a result of a revocation, suspension or limitation, we would no longer be able to perform AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare, or AlloSure Lung which would limit our revenues and materially harm our business. If we were to lose our license in other states where we are required to hold licenses, we would not be able to test specimens from those states, which could also have a material adverse effect on our business. The FDA has traditionally chosen not to exercise its authority to regulate laboratory developed tests, or LDTs, because it believes that laboratories certified as high complexity under the CLIA, such as ours, have demonstrated expertise and ability in test procedures and analysis. However, beginning in September 2006, the FDA issued draft guidance on a subset of LDTs known as "in vitro diagnostic multivariate index assays," or IVDMIAs. We applied for, and obtained in August 2008, 510(k) clearance for AlloMap Heart for marketing and sale as a test to aid in the identification of recipients with a low probability of moderate or severe rejection. A 510(k) submission is a premarketing submission made to the FDA. Clearance may be granted by the FDA if it finds the device or test provides satisfactory evidence pertaining to the claimed intended uses and indications for the device or test. In October 2023, the FDA proposed a new policy under which the FDA intends to provide greater oversight of LDTs, through a phase-out of its general enforcement discretion approach to LDTs. In connection with this, the FDA proposed a rule that would amend its regulations to make explicit that in vitro diagnostic products are devices under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. There is no assurance whether, or when, this proposed policy and/or rule will be adopted or as to the content of any policies or rules eventually adopted. Any future rulemaking, guidance, or other oversight of LDTs and clinical laboratories that develop and perform them, if and when finalized, may affect the sales of our products and how customers use our products, and may require us to change our business model in order to maintain compliance with these laws. A similar situation may occur if Congress decides to enable newly proposed regulations, such as the updated Verifying Accurate Leading-edge IVCT Development Act of 2021. There is no assurance whether, or when, this proposed policy and/or rule will be adopted or as to the content of any policies or rule that may eventually be adopted. For AlloSure Kidney and other similar testing solutions, if required by the FDA or if new laws are enacted we may be required to conduct additional analytical studies and clinical trials to demonstrate clinical validity and safety and effectiveness of our tests, and submit to the FDA a premarket approval application, or PMA, or 510(k) premarket notification application. We would need to obtain FDA approval or clearance for any existing tests currently offered as LDTs, and subsequent to commercialization of any new tests. There can be no assurance that any of our tests or additional uses of our tests for which we seek clearance or approval in the future will be cleared or approved on a timely basis, or at all, and there can be no assurance that labeling claims will be consistent with our current claims or adequate to support continued adoption of and reimbursement for our current and future tests. Moreover, any new FDA or regulatory requirements could complicate our compliance efforts. While we believe that we are currently in material compliance with applicable laws and regulations relating to our LDTs, we cannot be certain that the FDA or other regulatory agencies would agree with our determination. A determination that we have violated these laws, or a public announcement that we are being investigated for possible violation of these laws, could hurt our business and our reputation.

When we market our products and our solutions under development in foreign jurisdictions, we are subject to rules and regulations in those jurisdictions. In some foreign countries, including countries in the EU, the reimbursement of our current and future solutions is subject to governmental control. In these countries, reimbursement negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after the receipt of marketing approval for a test candidate. If reimbursement of our future solutions in any jurisdiction is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, or if reimbursement rates are set at unsatisfactory levels, we may be unable to, or decide not to, market our test in that jurisdiction.

The clinical laboratory testing industry is highly regulated, and there can be no assurance that the regulatory environment in which we operate will not change significantly and adversely in the future. Our arrangements with customers may expose us to broadly applicable fraud and abuse and other laws and regulations that may restrict the financial arrangements and relationships through which we market, sell and distribute our products and services. Our employees, consultants, principal investigators, advisors and commercial partners may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including non-compliance with regulatory standards and requirements. In addition to the CLIA regulation, other federal and state healthcare laws and regulations that may affect our ability to conduct business, include, without limitation: - federal and state laws and regulations regarding billing and claims payment applicable to clinical laboratories and/or regulatory agencies enforcing those laws and regulations;- federal civil and criminal false claims laws and civil monetary penalty laws, which prohibit, among other things, individuals or entities from knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented to the government, claims for payment from Medicare, Medicaid or other third-party payers that are false or fraudulent, or making a false statement material to a false or fraudulent claim;- the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which constrains our marketing practices, educational programs, pricing policies, and relationships with healthcare providers or other entities, by prohibiting, among other things, knowingly and willfully soliciting, receiving, offering or paying remuneration, directly or indirectly, to induce or reward, or in return for, either the referral of an individual or the purchase or recommendation of an item or service reimbursable under a federal healthcare program, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs;- the federal physician self-referral law, commonly known as the Stark Law, which prohibits a physician from making a referral to an entity for certain designated health services, including clinical laboratory services, reimbursed by Medicare if the physician (or a member of the physician's family);- has a financial relationship with the entity, and which also prohibits the submission of any claims for reimbursement for designated health services furnished pursuant to a prohibited referral;- HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, or HITECH, and its implementing regulations, which imposes certain requirements relating to the privacy, security and transmission of individually identifiable health information; HIPAA also created criminal liability for knowingly and willfully falsifying or concealing a material fact or making a materially false statement in connection with the delivery of or payment for healthcare benefits, items or services;- state laws regarding prohibitions on fee-splitting;- the federal healthcare program exclusion statute; and - state and foreign law equivalents of each of the above federal laws and regulations, such as anti-kickback, false claims, and self-referral laws, which may apply to items or services reimbursed by any third-party payer, including commercial insurers, and state and foreign laws governing the privacy and security of health information in certain circumstances, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts. Because of the breadth of these laws and the narrowness of available statutory and regulatory exemptions, it is possible that some of our business activities could be subject to challenge under one or more of such laws. Any action brought against us for violation of these laws or regulations, even if we successfully defend against it, could cause us to incur significant legal expenses and divert our management's attention from the operation of our business. We may be subject to private "qui tam" actions brought by individual whistleblowers on behalf of the federal or state governments, with potential liability under the federal False Claims Act, including mandatory treble damages and significant per-claim penalties. We previously received a civil investigative demand, or CID, from the United States Department of Justice, or DOJ, requesting that we produce certain documents in connection with a False Claims Act investigation being conducted by the DOJ regarding certain business practices related to our kidney testing and phlebotomy services, and a subpoena from the SEC in relation to an investigation by the SEC in respect of matters similar to those identified in the CID, as well as certain of our accounting and public reporting practices. On September 25, 2023, we reported that by letter dated September 19, 2023, we were notified by the staff of the SEC that the SEC has concluded its investigation as to our company and does not intend to recommend an enforcement action by the SEC against us. We also previously received an information request from a state regulatory agency. The state regulatory agency later requested that we submit an application for state licensure for certain specimen processing activities. We are in the process of applying for that license. We previously received a request for information from a separate state regulatory agency and we may receive additional requests for information from the DOJ or other regulatory and governmental agencies regarding similar or related subject matters. We do not believe that the CID, the prior SEC subpoena, or the state regulatory agency information request raises or raised any issues regarding the safety or clinical utility of any of our products or services and are cooperating fully with the investigations and the request for information. Although we remain committed to compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, we cannot predict the outcome of the DOJ investigation or any other requests or investigations that may arise in the future regarding these or other subject matters. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of the federal, state and foreign laws described above or any other current or future fraud and abuse or other laws and regulations that apply to us, we may be subject to penalties, including significant criminal, civil, and administrative penalties, damages, fines,imprisonment for individuals, exclusion from participation in government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, injunctions, recall or seizure of products, total or partial suspension of production, denial or withdrawal of pre-marketing product approvals, and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations, any of which could adversely affect our ability to operate our business and our results of operations. In addition, if any governmental body, such as the DOJ or SEC, determines that we have not complied with applicable securities or other laws, such governmental body could initiate a proceeding against us, which may ultimately lead to significant penalties and other relief assessed against us, including monetary fines. We may expend significant financial and managerial resources in connection with responding to the CID and other information requests. Any of the foregoing consequences could seriously harm our business and our financial results. In addition, we have implemented and strive to continuously develop, implement and improve compliance policies and procedures intended to train our sales, billing, marketing and other personnel regarding compliance with state and federal laws applicable to our business. Our efforts to implement appropriate monitoring of compliance with such policies and procedures are likewise ongoing. We may need to supplement and amend our current policies and procedures and implement additional policies and procedures in the future. In addition, despite our compliance policies and procedures, and related training and monitoring, we may experience situations in which employees may fail to fully adhere to our policies and procedures. Such failures may subject us to administrative, civil, and criminal actions, penalties, damages, fines, exclusion from participation in federal healthcare programs, refunding of payments received by us and curtailment of our operations.

We rely on third-party laboratory services providers to draw and partially process the patient blood samples that are analyzed in our Brisbane, California laboratory. Our business will suffer if these service providers do not support AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, HeartCare, AlloSure Lung or the future solutions that we may develop. For example, these laboratories may determine that processing the samples for our solutions requires too much additional effort. Additionally, if transplant facilities have relationships with large reference laboratories that will not process and send out our specimens, the clinicians at these facilities may deem ordering our tests outside of these relationships too inconvenient for their patients. A lack of acceptance of our current and future solutions by these service providers could result in lower test volume.

Expedited, reliable shipping is essential to our operations. We rely heavily on providers of transport services for reliable and secure point-to-point transport of recipient samples to our laboratory and enhanced tracking of these recipient samples. Should a carrier encounter delivery performance issues such as loss, damage or destruction of a sample, it may be difficult to replace our patient samples in a timely manner and such occurrences may damage our reputation and lead to decreased demand for our services and increased cost and expense to our business. In addition, any significant increase in shipping rates could adversely affect our operating margins and results of operations. Similarly, strikes, severe weather, natural disasters or other service interruptions, including those affecting delivery services we use would adversely affect our ability to receive and process recipient samples on a timely basis.

Our clinical development relies on our ability to secure access to tissue and blood samples, as well as recipient information, including biopsy results and clinical outcomes from the same patient. Furthermore, the studies through which our future solutions are developed may rely on access to multiple samples from the same recipient over a period of time as opposed to samples at a single point in time or archived samples. We will require additional samples and recipient data for future research, development and validation. Access to recipients and samples on a real-time, or non-archived, basis is limited and often on an exclusive basis, and there is no guarantee that future initiatives will be successful in obtaining and validating additional samples. Additionally, the process of negotiating access to new and archived donor and recipient data and samples is lengthy since it typically involves numerous parties and approval levels to resolve complex issues, such as usage rights, institutional review board approval, recipient consent, privacy rights and informed consent of recipients, publication rights, intellectual property ownership and research parameters. If we are not able to acquire or negotiate access to new and archived donor and recipient data and tissue and blood samples with source institutions, or if other laboratories or our competitors secure access to these samples before us, our ability to research, develop and commercialize future solutions will be limited or delayed.