About OrganOx Limited
OrganOx Limited is an Oxford-based MedTech business at the forefront of changing the way donor organs are preserved in the critical time between donation and transplantation with patented normothermic machine perfusion technology that can preserve donor livers for up to 24 hours before transplant.
The company was founded in 2008 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford to advance the normothermic perfusion technology invented by Professor Peter Friend and colleagues, and further developed by Professor Constantin Coussios.
Their leading product, OrganOx metra, is the world’s first fully automated system for keeping a human donor liver functioning for up to 24 hours outside the body. The invention breaks with 40 years of traditional organ preservation in ice, doubling the time that donor organs can be preserved.
The device mimics the environment of the human body with warm, oxygenated blood and nutrients supplied to the donor liver in the crucial time between donation and transplantation. Through developing the metra, OrganOx has enabled transplant teams to objectively assess the function of a donor liver before a transplant, something which is impossible with ice storage. This is particularly important when a donor liver is identified as ‘marginal’ when there is uncertainty as to whether it will function following a transplant.
