ASTS-Roche Pioneer Award 2009

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The ASTS-Roche Pioneer award is the most distinguished award bestowed upon an individual by the ASTS for a significant contribution to the field of transplantation.  (Previous Award Recipients)

Sir Roy Yorke Calne, FRS is a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation; he performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968. His surgical procedures also laid claim to many other pioneering successes in his career: the world's first liver, heart, and lung transplant in 1987; the first intestinal transplant in the U.K. in 1992, and the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver, and kidney cluster transplant in 1994.

Calne is a fellow of the Royal Society and was Professor of Surgery at Cambridge University between 1965 and 1968 where he initiated the kidney transplant program. He was Harkness Fellow at Harvard Medical School from 1960-61.

Much of his subsequent work focused on the improvement of immunosuppression techniques aimed at prolonging the life of liver transplant recipients. The results were encouraging, and Calne decided to go to the United States to learn more about immunosuppressants and work with other transplant researchers. From 1960 to 1961 Calne was associated with the Harvard Medical School and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and with the team there headed by Dr. Joseph Murray that had carried out the first successful human kidney transplant in 1954.

He was elected to the Royal Society in 1974 and knighted Knight Bachelor, in 1986.

Sir Roy studied at Lancing College and then received his MB and BS from Guy's Hospital Medical School in London.

Previous ASTS-Roche Pioneer Award Recipients