Prof. Gabriel Oniscu

Gabriel Oniscu is a transplant surgeon with a clinical focus on multi-organ transplantation and living kidney donation.

He graduated from the University of Medicine of Iasi, Romania and has completed his surgical and transplant training in Edinburgh, Birmingham, King’s College Hospital, London and Assan Medical Centre Seoul and obtained a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. Until recently he was the Director of the Edinburgh Transplant Centre, lead clinician for novel organ perfusion and preservation technologies and Transplant Advisor to the Chief Medical Officer in Scotland.

Dr. Luciano Potena

Luciano Potena, graduated in Medicine in 1997, completed his clinical fellowship in Cardiology in 2001, and earned a PhD degree in 2005 at the University of Bologna, Italy. He improved his scientific education at the Department of Experimental Cardiology of Utrecht University, The Netherlands (1999), and at Stanford University, California (2003-05). He currently holds the position of Director of the Heart Failure and Transplant Unit of the IRCCS Bologna Academic Hospital.

Dr Potena has been involved in heart transplant and advanced heart failure since his MD thesis discussion in 1997. His research path was focused on prognostic stratification of advanced heart failure, development of cardiac allograft vasculopathy, CMV infection, complications of immunosuppressive therapy after heart transplant, and antibody mediated rejection. On these topics, he co-authored over 150 full papers in peer-reviewed journals, several book chapters, and he has been involved in the design and conduction of national multicenter studies on immunosuppressive therapy, and co-authored international guidelines in the field of heart transplantation and advanced heart failure. Co-chaired the ESOT congress 2021. He is leadership career in ESOT started in 2013 when he was appointed chair of the new cardiothoracic section ECTTA. He was then elected as treasurer in 2015 and is currently the president of ESOT. He is a reviewer for several medical journals, and is currently associate editor of the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation .

Prof. Vassilios Papalois KGSJ MD PhD FICS FRCS FEBS

Professor Vassilios Papalois is professor of transplantation surgery and consultant transplant and general surgeon at Hammersmith Hospital. He leads a Transplant Centre of Excellence focusing on high risk and extended criteria kidney and pancreas transplantation.

Prof. Stefan Schneeberger MD

Stefan Schneeberger currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Department of Visceral, Transplant and Thoracic Surgery and Head of the Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery Program at the Innsbruck Medical University.

He received his medical degree from the Leopold Franzens University and was later appointed a faculty position at the Medical University of Innsbruck. He spent 6 years working at the University of Pittsburgh and the Johns Hopkins University in research and clinical positions at the level of Assistant and Associate Professor. He also obtained an Executive MBA in general management at the executive level from the St. Gallen University in Switzerland. Professor Schneeberger served on numerous advisory boards for the pharmaceutical and engineering industry and builds on an extensive clinical trial experience. His clinical work focuses mainly on ischaemia/reperfusion injury, machine perfusion, vascularised composite allotransplantation and rejection. Over 185 original publications, numerous reviews and book chapters and research funding exceeding 6.5M USD document his scientific work. He actively contributed to several medical associations, was the founder and first president of the American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation and the VCA Committee of ESOT. He is the immediate Past President of ESOT (European Society for Organ Transplantation) and serves as reviewer in numerous scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Communications.

Prof. Thierry Berney MD MSc

Thierry Berney is a Professor of Surgery at the University of Geneva School of Medicine, and the Chief of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Geneva Hospitals.

He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, with an MSc degree in 1981, and from the University of Geneva School Of Medicine in 1987. He specialized in General and Visceral Surgery in Switzerland and in Transplantation Surgery in Brussels, Belgium and Miami, Florida. Since 2002, he is the head of the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center, and the Director of the Islet and Pancreas Transplant Programs at the University of Geneva Hospitals. The Geneva Islet Transplantation Program is one of the most active worldwide and serves as the centralized islet production facility for the GRAGIL consortium, a Swiss-French collaborative network of clinical islet transplantation. He is a member of several Surgical and Transplantation Societies. In 2007, he became the founding chairman of the European Pancreas and Islet Transplantation Association (EPITA) and has held this position until 2013. He currently serves as the President of the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT). He is the Past-President of the Swiss Society of Transplantation and the President-elect of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA). He sits on the Editorial Board of several peer-reviewed scientific journals. His research interests include islet cell biology, islet graft imaging and strategies to improve islet engraftment. He is the author of over 250 articles and book chapters.

Prof. John Forsythe MD

John Forsythe is Professor and Consultant Transplant Surgeon at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, UK, and Medical Director of the Organ Donation and Transplantation section of NHSBT for the whole of the UK.

Prior to this, he was a Consultant Surgeon with special interest in Kidney transplantation at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne. A prolific speaker, he has presented at numerous national and international meetings and chaired many sessions. His career has been marked by a number of awards and distinctions, including Moynihan Prize and Medal (Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, 1989), Honeyman Gillespie Lecture (1998) and Rutherford Morison Lecture 2010. He has published over 100 peer reviewed papers or editorials. He has held many professional committee appointments, among them Lead Clinician for Organ Donation and Transplantation in Scotland and Chairman of the Scottish Transplant Group. In the past he was Chair of the Kidney/Pancreas Advisory group for the UK that designed a new allocation policy for kidney transplants, introduced in 2006. He was Non-Executive director of NHSBT when the Blood and Transplant sections of this organization came together, serving two terms for a total of 8 years. At that time he was also Chair of the UK Committee on the Safety of Blood Tissues and Organs (SaBTO), an advisory committee to all four Departments of Health in the UK. He served as General Secretary of the British Transplantation Society prior to being elected as president in 2005. His first position within ESOT was as Chair of the Education committee. He is now Past President of European Society for Organ Transplantation having served as Secretary and President of ESOT for a number of years.

Prof. Carla Baan

Carla C. Baan, PhD, is Professor and head of the Nephrology & Transplantation Laboratory at Erasmus Medical Center, University Hospital Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Dr Baan obtained her doctorate from Erasmus University, The Netherlands.

Her position involves the supervision of doctorate research related to the role of cytokines, regulatory T cells, B cells, cell therapy and immunosuppressive drugs in clinical organ transplantation.At the laboratory immunological tests to monitor pathways of donor directed reactivity are developed and used including multi-parameter flow cytometry/Facs sort and Elispot for T and B cell profiling, phosphospecific flow cytometry for the analysis of intracellular signaling pathways, cell culture assays to measure antigen specific proliferation & cytotoxicity, GWAS and PCR for gene expression and epigenetics, and immunohistochemistry.The aim of this translational work is to titrate the immunosuppressive burden on our patients in such a way that side-effects (infections, malignancies, cardiovascular events) are kept at a minimum while at the same time rejection processes are prevented. Dr Baan has been the President of the European Society for Organ Transplantation (2011-2013) and has been a member of the board of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (2015-2016). Currently, dr Baan is the Executive Editor_Basic Sciences of the Transplantation Journal.

Prof. Rutger Ploeg

Rutger Ploeg is Professor of Transplant Biology, Director of Clinical & Translational Research and Consultant Transplant Surgeon at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford.

He undertakes clinical, translational and experimental research in organ donation and transplantation. He focuses on mechanisms of injury and repair to enhance donor organ quality and allow regeneration after transplantation to increase allograft function and survival. Currently, he coordinates a national consortium in the UK to investigate QUality in Organ Donation (QUOD) and a European consortium to study preservation (COPE).

Prof. Ferdinand Muehlbacher

Prof. Bernard Charpentier

Doctor Bernard Charpentier graduated in 1975 from the University of Paris XII Créteil and is Professor Emeritus of exceptional class at the Faculty of Medicine Paris-Sud.

He has also been a hospital practitioner, former Head of the Department of Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation at the Bicêtre University Hospital. He was Director of the UMR INSERM/University Paris-Sud U542 and is part of the Joint Unit INSERM 1197/University Paris-Sud – Hôpital Brousse. Honorary Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Paris-Sud from 1998 to 2008, he was also former President of the Conference of Deans of Faculties of Medicine and Presidents of Medical Universities from 2003 to 2008. He has received several distinctions including in 2010 the Grand Prize of the Czech Transplant Foundation (Charles University – Prague). He was President of the European Society of Transplantation (ESOT) 2005-2007. He is a full member of the National Academy of Medicine, former President of the 1st Division and Vice President of the Academy of Medicine Foundation. He was elected Member of the Federation Council. European Federation of Medical Academies (FEAM) in 2012, then elected Vice-President in 2014 and finally President from 2015 to 2018. He was a member of the European Commission’s Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA) Consortium (2015-2018) and was elected President in 2017-2018. He is a Commander in the Order of the Legion of Honour, Officer in the National Order of Merit, Knight in the Order of Academic Palms, and Medal of Honour of the French Army Health Service.

Prof. Jan Lerut

Jan Lerut, MD, PhD; Professor emeritus of Surgery (February 18th, 1951). He graduated from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL-B) and trained in General Surgery at the KUL under the lead of Prof. Jacques A.GRUWEZ, the H.Heine University of Dusseldorf-G) under the lead of Prof. Karl KREMER and the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL-B) under the lead of Prof. Paul Jacques KESTENS.

From the start of his surgical career he was very involved in the field of organ transplantation. This interest resulted in a hepatobiliary and transplantation NATO-fellowship at the University Paris-Sud – Centre Hépatobiliaire under the lead of Prof. BISMUTH and at the University Pittsburgh Medical Centre under the lead of Prof. STARZL. He was director of the abdominal transplant program at the Inselspital University of Bern (CH) from 1987 to 1991. He was ordinary Professor of Surgery and director of the Department of Abdominal and Transplantation Surgery. He was Director of the Starzl Abdominal Transplant Unit of the University Hospitals Saint Luc from 1991 to 2016 and of the UCL Transplant Centre in Brussels from 2006 to 2016. He has served as president of the Belgian Society of Transplantation, the Royal Belgian Society of Surgery, the Eurotransplant Liver Allocation Committee (ELIAC),the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT), the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS) and the International Living Donor Liver Transplantation Study Group (iLDLT-SG).He is vice-chair of the UEMS-European Board of Transplantation Surgery (EBTS) and member of the Belgian Superior Health Council. He is member of 22 learning societies related to surgery and transplantation, several councils, scientific committees (e.g. Transmet colorectal metatstases transplantation project, European University Diploma Hepatic, pancreatic and biliary onco-surgical strategies, UEMS-European Board Transplantation Surgery). He serves as reviewer for the major peer-review journals in the field of surgery, transplantation and hepatology and is member of different editorial boards. He leads the Euroliver Foundation and Soroptimist awareness campaigns for adolescents in relation to organ donation and transplantation. He has published over 350 peer-reviewed articles, he authored 24 books chapters and 24 scientific films. He made more than 750 communications on national and international congresses, most of them devoted to liver transplantation. He is honorary member of the French Society for Surgery (AFC),the French Academy for Surgery, the International Society of Surgery (ISS) as well as honorary director of the International Transplantation Center at the Zhejiang International Shulan hospital and the Faculty of Medicine Zhejiang Shuren University in Hangzhou (China). He received the degree of doctor honoris causa at the University of Iasl (Rom) and the ILTS and ELITA distinguished service awards as well as the TTS “Best investigator driven study” and “Mentorship, Education and Training in Transplantation” awards. He has been visiting professor at many renowned institutions. His research interests focus on the development of technical refinements in abdominal wall , abdominal sarcoma and liver transplantation surgery , transplantation oncology, vascular liver diseases and on the use of minimal immunosuppression and tolerance induction in liver transplantation. His H-index is 47; total number of citations 9949. September 30, 2016, he ended his active academic career and became professor emeritus and scientific collaborator of the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Research (IREC) of the Université catholique Louvain (UCL). During both his surgical training and career, he got acquainted with five different linguistic and cultural European environments (Dutch, German, English, French, Polish speaking). This situation together with his longstanding interest for and exposure to Asian medicine and surgery’ (in particular Japan, Taiwan, South-Korea and China), allowed him to get a unique insight in the today’s surgical world. A worldwide network, build-up during the recent decade, resulted in several important scientific collaborative global efforts joining western and eastern experiences. This collaboration resulted in several highly rated publications in the field of hepatobiliary cancer and transplantation. Besides his multiple scientific activities, he remains very engaged to bring transplantation medicine and surgery to the larger public.

Prof. Wojciech A. Rowiński

On March 14th, after a year of brave struggle with acute myeloid leukemia, 2001–2003 ESOT president, Professor Wojciech Rowinski passed away.

Born in 1935, his childhood was not spared from the horrors of World War II. When in the mood, he used to tell me about bombings, and also about playing in the ruins of Warsaw leveled down by the Nazis. The son of a famous radiology professor, after the divorce of the parents, he was raised by his mother, a modest math teacher, in a feminine home, and adopted honor, sincerity and truthfulness as elementary virtues. In the midst of the years of Stalinism, when asked by the head of his college why he wouldn't join the communist youth party, he simply answered: “You know I can't. I'm a churchgoer.” He used to say his choice of professional carrier was mostly a matter of luck: Inspired by his older sister, who was already a medicine student and with the wild card of being the best student of the college in hand which granted him entry to any university in Poland, he entered medical school. He graduated from the Medical School of Warsaw in 1958 and spent 2 years of postgraduate internship in the Institute of Hematology with no salary at all, making his living on medical editorship. There he met his first mentor, Dr Andrzej Trojanowski, a surgeon who had taught him everything on physical examination of patients, “from head to toe,” an ability he cherished and built up over his entire life and put a lot of effort passing it to us years later. In 1961, Dr Rowinski began surgical internship at the Royal Wolverhampton Hospital in the UK. In spite of the peak of the Iron Curtain and Cold War, he came back to Poland a year later to begin his residency in the 1st Department of Surgery in Warsaw, as a volunteer. When his boss, Professor Jan Nielubowicz, got an offer for a research fellowship from Department of Nephrology at Peter Brent Brigham Hospital, Boston, all his attendings declined the offer to go along with him. Dr Rowinski, then a young resident, asked if he could go and was accepted. Thus, in 1964, he went to Harvard Medical School—a leading center in renal transplantation at that time—and worked as a research fellow with John Merrill and Joseph Murray and forged a lifetime friendship with Nicolas Tilney. During his forthcoming visits to the United States, not only he became a fellow of ASTS, but his straightforwardness and likability won him the friendship of Mark Hardy, John Najarian, David Sutherland, Barry Kahan, and many other prominent figures in transplantation. After he got home in 1965, preparations for the kidney transplantation had already been set in motion, and on January 26, 1966, Danusia Milewska, an 18-year-old nursing student with renal failure, got her kidney transplant from a deceased donor, a donation after cardiac death. Wojtek Rowinski assisted in surgery and took care of her after the first successful transplantation in Poland. At the same time, Wojciech Rowinski was also an extremely prolific researcher. As with majority of Dr Nielubowicz's employees, he worked mornings in surgery and afternoons (which often lengthened into nights) in the animal laboratory of experimental surgery. As early as in 1967, by immunizing horses and rabbits, he developed anti-human lymphocyte serum and globulin ready to be used in animals and humans, and assessed its effect on skin, kidney, heart and liver rejection in pigs and rats. When the 1st Department of Surgery moved to another hospital in 1976, Dr Rowinski suffered a forced break in his transplantation adventure until 1981, when he became the head of the Department of General Surgery of Child Jesus Hospital, which soon turned into General and Transplantation Surgery. Until his retirement in 2006, he remained the head and spiritus movens of the department, which performed approximately 100 renal, 15 pancreatic, and 40 liver transplantations a year. However, when I think what was so special about him, I see accountability, diligence, and profound humanity. He was never in a hurry in front of his patients and knew them all very well. When he was leaving work late in the evening, he used to make a quick round before he left. Once, unaware that he had knocked off, I called him half an hour later to give him an update. Even then, he listened to me patiently and then asked if I know what was the potassium of Mr X or when Mrs Y last had her bowel movement and that I better check on that once again. On the other hand, we were allowed to seek his advice regardless of the hour of the night. He cared for his employees too: He helped to advance our careers, promoted PhDs and docentships, and organized lucrative contracts in the Middle East when a surgeon's salary in Poland hovered around $30 a month. When two of his students were arrested for participation in anticommunist strikes in the 1980s, he rescued them from being expelled from the medical school and gave them a job afterward. He always remembered who in the Coorenor project loves Polish traditional plum chocolates, and that last time they met, he gave Dr Sollinger a new tie, which he liked very much. He was fond of making small gifts such as these. Dr Rowinski started his nearly 50-year-long career in transplantation when there were no legal regulations, no established financial support, and society was, at best, cautious about this method of treatment. He actually fathered our Transplantation Act and all its amendments, made sure criteria for brain and circulatory death were established, and with the help of Janusz Walaszewski, created a national coordinating system for multi-organ recoveries which later evolved into Poltransplant. He encouraged the development of many transplantation programs across the country, designed formal residency training of transplant physicians that became the base for EBSQ examinations, founded, and for some time presided over, the Polish Transplantation Society, and authored nearly 300 publications indexed in PubMed. After his “retirement” (although as far as I know he never really retired, working 12 to 14 hours a day for the sake of transplantation), he designed nationwide surveys of attitudes toward donation and transplantation, gave dozens of lectures, met with Catholic priests and politicians, and managed to triple donation rates in two slowest regions of the country. Without his relentlessness and perseverance, our system would probably still be struggling half-way from the point we know now. He never cared for gratitude or financial compensation for what he did, and he never made a lot of money on surgery. And yet he fathered the transplant organization, which has saved the lives of more than 24 000 patients so far and is capable of performing 1200 kidney, 300 liver, 100 heart, and 50 pancreatic transplants a year as well as hand and face transplantations. At the end of his life, he himself became a transplant patient after bone marrow transplantation for leukemia. That gift of a year of life meant so much to him and his family; after his condition took a turn for the worst, his wife Joanna still wrote a touching thank-you letter to the anonymous donor. Charles H. Bennett, an information physicist, believes that when a man dies, a lot of his true being is preserved in memory of his relatives, friends, and consequences of his deeds. This said, Dr Wojciech Rowinski, our teacher, mentor, and friend, is not gone, but will remain in our loving memory forever. full article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tri.12333

Prof. John Dark

John Dark, professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Newcastle University, retired last autumn after 30 years as a leading heart and lung transplant surgeon at the Freeman Hospital.

Prof. Bo-Goeran Ericzon

Professor Bo-Göran Ericzon received his MD at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1978, and joined the transplant team at the Karolinska Institutet in 1984. Shortly thereafter, Professor Ericzon took a clinical and research fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, PA, USA. In 1993, he earned a Ph D from the Karolinska Institutet with a thesis entitled “Studies on the immunosuppressive and metabolic effects of FK506 in monkey and man”.

Since 2000, he has been Professor and Head of the Division of Transplantation Surgery, Department of Clinical Sciences, Intervention and Technology (CLINTEC) at the Karolinska Institutet. Professor Ericzon’s main research interest is related to liver transplantation for metabolic liver disorders and, in 1990, he became the first in the world to treat familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP) with liver transplantation. Another important field of research currently under evaluation is liver transplantation in combination with allogenic bone marrow transplantation for the treatment of advanced cancers. Professor Ericzon’s team also introduced microdialysis as a research and monitoring tool following liver transplantation. Recently, an important focus of research has been hepatocyte transplantation. In 2008, Professor Ericzon’s team performed the first hepatocyte transplantation in Scandinavia. Professor Ericzon is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and he is also a member of several international scientific committees. Between 1997 and 1999, he was the president of the European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT).

Prof. Gil Thiel

With great sadness, we have learnt that Prof. Gilbert Thiel passed away 9 January 2012. Gilbert Thiel was head of the Department of Organ Transplantation at the University Hospital Basel from 1969 to 1985 and head of the Department of Nephrology until 1999. He was a pioneer in the field of kidney transplantation in Europe and a visionary in many areas of transplantation medicine.

In 1968, he performed the first living kidney donor transplantation in Switzerland, transplanted the first diabetic patient worldwide, was a pioneer in cyclosporine-based immunosuppression, initiated the first crossover transplantation in the German-speaking part of Europe and founded the first, and still only, nationwide living donor registry in the world almost 18 years ago. Gilbert Thiel was an outstanding personality who strongly influenced many generations of physicians. He practiced medicine with great expertise but was also a kind and caring clinician. His tireless service for his patients, his integrity and his truthfulness were unique. He considered any medical question as a challenge and worked long hours to solve difficult problems. If he was convinced of something he fought for it, even against all odds. His struggle to implement living kidney donation is exemplary. At the time, Gilbert Thiel was sharply criticized by many leaders in the field of transplantation for his idea to transplant kidneys from living persons. In spite of this opposition, he persisted in developing this new approach. As a testament to his vision, living donation is nowadays the treatment of choice in regard to kidney replacement therapy. Gilbert Thiel was the epitome of an academic and a clear thinker. Before taking a decision, he would analyse a situation in detail and tried to anticipate every possible pitfall. However, once a decision was made, he did not hesitate for a moment and was able to convince his colleagues and faculty members to consider his new and unconventional ideas. Gilbert Thiel was and remains the lighthouse that gives us direction in transplantation medicine. Although he is no longer with us, his influence will be felt for decades. Beyond his many other merits, Gilbert Thiel was an extremely sensitive and humble human being. With him, we are losing a visionary, a mentor, but most of all a friend. He was a great person and his death leaves a big void in our lives and in the lives of his loved ones. We want to express our deepest condolences to Gilbert's family and share their grief over this great loss. Full article: https://academic.oup.com/ndt/article/28/8/e10/1832167

Prof. Raimund Margreiter

Prof. Dr. Raimund Margreiter, a medical legend and pioneer in transplant surgery, was born in Fügen in Zillertal. In 1983 he carried out the first heart transplant in Austria and in the year 2000 he helped Theo Kelz receive two new hands in an 18-hour operation.

Furthermore, Dr. Margreiter is and always has been of the conviction that successful transplantation is impossible without knowledge of the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms. "In the long term, high level medical care is inconceivable without fundamental research" Dr. Margreiter points out. Next to organ transplantation Dr. Margreiter also focused on tumor surgery and volunteered as head of the Tyrolean cancer network (Tiroler Krebshilfe). Articles of interest: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/tri.12209

Prof. Paul McMaster

Paul McMaster is an English surgeon who worked for 35 years at the University of Cambridge and later at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

He retired from NHS life in 2000 to undertake medical care in the developing world, training in women’s fistula surgery repair in Uganda and Rwanda. In 2005 he began working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and carried out surgical projects in Somalia, Congo, and Burundi before moving to MSF’s Amsterdam headquarters to become surgical director. He returned to the United Kingdom in 2012 to become president of MSF UK, and he continues to work on surgical projects abroad.

Prof. Gerhard Opelz

Prof. Hans Brynger

Professor Brynger ended his professional career as a transplant surgeon in 1990 when he took on another career being responsible for ‘foreign affairs’ regarding patients, post graduate training and projects in health care planning and management within the fields of medicine and odontology. Parallel with this activity he still maintained contact with many of his international colleagues and was frequently invited as a lecturer

Full article: https://moam.info/in-memoriam-hans-brynger-wiley-online-library_59cef6c21723dd7cffa402d2.html

Prof. Walter Land

Dr Walter G. Land is the former Head of the Division of Transplantation Surgery at the Klinikum Grosshadern, University of Munich. After graduating he worked at the Institute of Surgical Research, the University of Munich from 1967-1971. At that time, he produced a horse antilymphocyte serum, a powerful immunosuppressant, that he used to treat the first successful heart transplant patient, in cooperation with Chris Barnard, Cape Town, South Africa (in 1968).

Prof. Sir Roy Calne

Sir Roy Calne FRS is a surgeon and pioneer of organ transplantation. He made a major contribution to the success of transplants by developing strategies for overcoming organ rejection.

Achieving a number of surgical firsts, his work in liver transplantation has restored normal life to thousands of people with end-stage liver disease. After developing the first antirejection drug, Roy devised the regimen for suppressing the immune system in transplant recipients that is now universally in use. This led to a vast increase in the number of transplant units around the world. Roy performed the first European liver transplant, the world’s first heart, liver and lung transplant, as well as the first successful organ cluster transplant of stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney in 1992. Roy has received many honours and awards, including a knighthood in 1986. In 2012, he was awarded the Lasker Prize for the development of liver transplantation. In 2014, he received a lifetime achievement Pride of Britain award.