The Congress took place in Boston, USA, from 20–24 June 2026. The Young Investigator Award recognises outstanding research by an early-career investigator and helps offset the cost of attending the Congress.
Hatem presented his award-winning abstract, 'Automated and continuous transition from hypothermic to normothermic machine perfusion minimises hepatocellular injury in circulatory death porcine livers and restores function in very high-risk human livers'. The research forms the major component of his DPhil and was led by senior author and supervisor Professor Peter Friend.
Every year, patients die waiting for a liver transplant because there are not enough suitable donor organs. At the same time, many donated livers are discarded because clinicians cannot be certain they will function safely after transplantation. Normothermic machine perfusion (NMP), which circulates oxygenated blood through the liver at body temperature, has transformed liver transplantation by allowing surgeons to assess organ function before transplant, increasing the number of livers that can be used.
However, some donor livers that appear healthy before retrieval still fail during machine perfusion. Growing evidence suggests that the transition from cold storage to body temperature at the start of NMP is a major cause of injury.
Working with Ben Kaye from Oxford's Department of Engineering Science, Hatem developed an automated technique using a clinically available NMP device. The approach begins with highly oxygenated cold perfusion to restore the liver's energy reserves before gradually warming the organ to body temperature. Throughout the process, the device automatically regulates temperature, blood pressure and the composition of the perfusion fluid, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.
In a preclinical study using pig livers, the new technique significantly reduced liver injury compared with standard normothermic machine perfusion. The team, including Dr Kazuyuki Gyoten, then tested the approach on four human donor livers that had previously been declined for transplantation. Despite being considered very high risk and having undergone prolonged cold storage, all four livers recovered healthy function during machine perfusion.
The findings suggest that this approach could enable surgeons to safely recover donor livers that would otherwise be discarded, further increasing the number of organs available for patients waiting for a transplant.
The research was carried out under the supervision of Professor Peter Friend and was supported by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Oxford Transplant Foundation, and the Oxfordshire Health Services Research Charity. OrganOx Limited provided the perfusion device and consumable sets used in the study.