Professor Friend was presented with the BTS Lifetime Achievement Award during the BTS 50th Anniversary Congress 2022.
The recipients of this honour must exhibit evidence of outstanding contributions to the past, present and future care of transplant patients, exemplify leadership in areas such as academic scholarship, research, administration, policy development, education, and clinical and/or scientific practice.
Professor Friend is OrganOx Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, and has worked with the OrganOx team for more than 20 years on the development of OrganOx's normothermic organ perfusion technology. He leads OrganOx's pre-clinical and clinical programmes of OrganOx's patented normothermic organ perfusion technology.
He is Professor of Transplantation at NDS and Director of the Oxford Transplant Centre, where he is responsible for the kidney, small bowel and pancreatic transplant programmes. Earlier in his career Professor Friend was Clinical Director of the Transplant Centre at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, one of the UK’s leading liver transplant centres and visiting Assistant Professor of Surgery at Indiana University Medical Centre, USA, where he established their liver transplant programme.
Professor Friend's research interests lie primarily in novel applications of normothermic organ perfusion, ranging from its use for extracorporeal support to preservation and repair prior to transplantation. He has published over 25 papers on the topic of normothermic perfusion, the basis of the OrganOx technology, as well as in the areas of clinical transplantation, immunosuppression, monoclonal antibodies, xenotransplantation, liver perfusion and aspects of general surgery.