There are more than 30,000 patients on the liver transplant waiting list in Europe and the US who will die without a transplant. However, there are only around 12,000 liver transplants per year in these countries and some 20% of patients die while waiting for a transplant. At the present time, the majority of livers for transplant come from heart-beating donors who have been declared brain dead and from whom the liver can be retrieved with a minimum of warm ischaemia time (deprivation of oxygen), resulting in minimal organ damage. Such donors are increasingly in short supply. Donors declared dead following cardiac arrest (non-heart-beating donors) are a much larger potential source of livers. However, because of the inevitable period of oxygen deprivation, most of these livers are deemed unsuitable for transplantation using current technology and only about 5% of transplanted livers come from this source. Furthermore, retrieved livers from donors are not infrequently discarded at the surgeon’s discretion for other reasons, particularly steatosis (fat deposition in the liver).

OrganOx Limited is developing a medical device that will increase the availability of suitable livers by enabling successful transplantation of organs from non-heart-beating donors and reducing the number of discarded livers. The device operates by maintaining the organ in a fully functioning state during transport and storage, by providing blood flow, oxygen, nutrients and temperature within physiological parameters. This not only enables the liver to be stored safely for a longer period (up to 24 hours) but also provides the surgeon with real-time and cumulative data with which to assess viability and make a decision whether to transplant. This is a major advance over the current method of assessment which is largely subjective.

OrganOx was formed as a spin-out from the University of Oxford in April 2008 by Professor Peter Friend, (Professor of Transplantation, University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Transplant Centre) and Dr. Constantin Coussios, (Reader in Biomedical Engineering at the Institute of BioMedical Engineering, University of Oxford). Following the appointment of Dr. Les Russell, an experienced medical devices CEO, the company secured Series A funding of £1.5m in December 2008 from 3 major sources: Oxford Technology Management (ECF), Technikos LLP and the University of Oxford Challenge Seed Fund.