In the UK over 6,500 people are currently on the waiting list for an organ transplant. In 2015/16 more organ transplants were carried out than ever before, but there is still a gap between the number of patients waiting for a transplant and the number of organs available. Professor Mike Nicholson, Dr Sarah Hosgood and Dr Patrick Trotter discuss how their research may help increase the quality and quantity of organs for transplantation.
Professor Michael Nicholson qualified from Nottingham University and trained in renal transplantation in Leicester and Oxford. He was the Director of the Transplant Service and Professor of Transplant Surgery in Leicester for 18 years. Early in 2015 he moved to Cambridge in order to further develop my work into ex-vivo normothermic perfusion.
Clinical interests: Professor Nicholson has a particular interest in live donor kidney transplantation and with colleague Peter Veitch introduced laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy into UK practice, performing the first operation in October 1998. He has now performed more than 600 laparoscopic donor nephrectomies and 1100 kidney transplants.
Academic activities: Professor Nicholson is the Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Blood and Transplant Research Unit in Organ Donation and Transplantation at the University of Cambridge and Newcastle University. He continues to be active in research addressing the pathophysiology of ischaemia-reperfusion injury and in the development of ex-vivo normothermic perfusion (EVNP) techniques. Professor Nicholson has published more than 340 papers in peer-reviewed journals and his translational research programme has taken renal normothermic perfusion from the laboratory into clinical practice. Kidney Research UK have funded a randomized controlled trial of EVNP using DCD kidneys in Cambridge, Newcastle, Guy’s Hospital and Edinburgh. Recruitment started in February 2016.
