IRV invests in Northernmost, a pioneer in modern organ preservation

IRV invests in Northernmost, a pioneer in modern organ preservation.

Kidney disease is one of the most pressing and underreported health crises of our time. The number of adults living with chronic kidney disease more than doubled between 1990 and 2023, reaching nearly 800 million people worldwide¹. Today, more than 1 in 7 Americans² and 1 in 10 Canadians³ are affected, with nearly 555,000 Americans currently on dialysis⁴.

For the more than 100,000 people in North America waiting for a kidney transplant, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Many wait years in deteriorating health. Too many never reach the operating table.

A broken supply chain

What makes this crisis particularly frustrating is that it’s partly avoidable. Around 30% of healthy recovered kidneys are discarded each year, not because they aren’t viable, but because the system fails them in transit.

Once a kidney is recovered from a donor, it begins a race against time. The gold standard for preserving organ quality during transport is hypothermic machine perfusion (HMP), a technique clinically proven to extend viability and improve transplant outcomes. But current HMP machines are bulky, expensive, and difficult to transport, making them impractical for widespread use.

The result? Two-thirds of donor kidneys in the US are still transported in cardboard iceboxes filled with preservation fluid and ice, a method largely unchanged for decades¹.

Enter Northernmost

Alberta-based Northernmost is developing the NoMo Kidney Pump, a next-generation device designed to bring HMP into the 21st century, to revolutionize how kidneys are preserved and transported for transplant.

The company was founded by Ron Mills, previously the team leader behind LifePort, the market-dominant kidney perfusion device. He and co-founder Daniel Salamon are now setting out to displace both their own prior work and the icebox standard that still dominates the industry.

NoMo is half the size and weight of existing HMP equipment. It is aviation-safe, powered by a 24-hour battery, and designed to ship unattended in commercial cargo or fit under a passenger seat. For the first time, continuous end-to-end machine perfusion across the entire kidney transport chain becomes operationally and economically feasible.

Northernmost pairs this hardware with a Product-as-a-Service (PaaS) business model, lowering the barrier to adoption for hospitals and Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs), the centers responsible for recovering and coordinating donor organs.

Our investment

We’re proud to be partnering with Ron, Daniel, and the Northernmost team on their mission to ensure that no viable kidney goes to waste and that no patient waits longer than they have to.

This investment aligns with several of IRV’s core themes:

Team-market fit: Ron and his team have done this before. They helped build the first generation of kidney perfusion technology. Now they’re back to make it obsolete.

Patient impact: By increasing the share of kidneys that arrive viable and transplant-ready, NoMo directly reduces wait times and saves lives.

Platform vision: Northernmost isn’t stopping at kidneys. The team is already developing capabilities for cardiac preservation and xenotransplantation, the use of organs from non-human animal sources, an emerging frontier in transplant medicine.

We’re excited to support a team that combines deep domain expertise with a genuinely transformative product. The organ preservation space has been waiting for this for a long time.

Sources

1 Chronic kidney disease has more than doubled since 1990, now affecting nearly 800 million people worldwide, November 7, 2025