Organ transplant champion OrganOx wins 2025 MacRobert Award for life-saving MedTech

The University of Oxford spinout was presented with the MacRobert Award gold medal and a prize of £50,000 by Science Minister Lord Vallance at a gala dinner in London.

Chair of the MacRobert Award judging panel, Dr Alison Vincent said: “OrganOx has developed a truly game-changing and life-saving innovation that is at the forefront of efforts to increase the number of donor organs available for transplantation.”

She said the company beat strong competition from the other two finalists, Synthesia and Microsoft Azure Fibre.

OrganOx maintain livers and kidneys in a functioning state outside the body for at least twice as long as conventional cold preservation techniques, dramatically increasing the number of transplants for patients, eradicating night-time operations for clinicians and reducing overall healthcare costs for providers.

A third, patient-connected device can also be used to provide ‘liver dialysis’ using either a human or porcine organ outside the body, to help patients in liver failure to recover without the need for a transplant.

Operating at body temperature (37C), the devices replicate the physiological conditions of an organ within the body by perfusing it with a red-cell suspension reconstituted from donor blood of the same blood type. This allows fully automated, operator-independent preservation of an organ in a functioning state outside the body for periods of up to 24 hours clinically and several days pre-clinically.

The technology, which was initially designed to preserve livers, has enabled over 6,000 transplants across four continents and twelve countries. Medical facilities adopting the technology have reported up to a 30 per cent net increase in transplants, with waiting times and waiting list mortality cut by more than half.

Professor Constantin Coussios, who co-founded OrganOx with liver transplant surgeon Professor Peter Friend, said: “Biology teaches engineers a lesson in humility. The liver and kidney represent two of the most non-linear and multivariate systems to attempt to control and emulate but the reward for eventually doing so successfully after two decades of effort is immense.

“Each quality-assured organ that has functioned effectively in our devices outside the body saves the life of a patient, over 6,000 to date, and gives that patient and their loved ones the gift of time and a quality of life previously thought irreclaimable.

“This achievement and the many more to come would not have been possible without the academic, technological and translational excellence of the UK innovation ecosystem.

“Peter and I would like to express our deepest gratitude to the exceptional OrganOx multi-disciplinary team for its dedication in bringing the metra device for liver and kidney to life, and to the Royal Academy of Engineering for the recognition of the impact that OrganOx’ groundbreaking organ technologies are having on patients, surgeons and the cost-effectiveness of healthcare systems globally.”

The MacRobert Award was inspired by and named in honour of Lady Rachel MacRobert (1884-1954), a geologist, suffragette and philanthropist who founded the MacRobert Trust.

The Award has recognised transformative UK engineering that also demonstrates commerciality and societal benefit for more than 55 years. From EMI in 1972 for the CT scanner to Touch Bionics in 2008 for the world’s first bionic hand, OrganOx joins a host of companies whose major medical innovations have earned them this iconic award. A number of Cambridge companies have been named as winner over the years.

The MacRobert Award winning OrganOx team comprises: Professor Constantin Coussios (Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer); Professor Peter Friend (Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer); Jacob Barrett (New Product Development Manager); Rupa Basu (Chief Commercial Officer); Jessica Day (New Product Development Manager); Dr Toni Day (Global Director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs); Matt Ellen (Software Engineer); Richard Kent (Head of Product Engineering); Craig Marshall (Chief Executive Officer); Chris Morris (Director of Clinical Services, New Ventures); Andy Self (Senior Vice President of New Ventures); Daniel Voyce (Senior Vice President of Product Development and Innovation) and Clint Watts (Head of Software).