Professor Sir Roy Calne, the pioneering surgeon based at Addenbrooke’s Hospital when he led the first liver transplant operation in Europe in 1968, has died at the age of 93, his family has said.
Sir Roy is considered one of the fathers of organ transplantation. He performed a series of surgical “world firsts” and his work on liver transplants offered thousands of people with end-stage liver disease a normal life, The Royal Society said. He had gone on to become the first doctor to use an immunosuppressant – hugely effective in reducing organ rejection – in 1978.
His family said the professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Cambridge died in the city late on Saturday evening.
Sir Roy was born in Richmond on December 30, 1930, and educated at Lancing College and King’s College before having his medical training at Guy’s Hospital in London. He was partly inspired to take on what was considered impossible – the successful transplant of an organ from one person to another – in the 1950s by his car mechanic father.
He was elected to the Royal Society in 1974, was knighted in 1986, and was awarded the 1988 Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded the 1984 Lister Medal for his contributions to surgical science. In 2021, Addenbrooke’s Hospital named its transplant unit the Roy Calne Transplant Unit, honouring his “world firsts”, and a plaque was placed at the entrance.
At the time, Professor Chris Watson credited the surgeon with putting “Cambridge on the map as an international centre for excellence”.
In 2021 it was the only transplant centre to perform all abdominal organ transplants, with more than 350 conducted each year, Prof Watson added.
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said Sir Roy was professor of surgery between 1965 and 1998, performing Cambridge’s first kidney transplant in 1965 and Europe’s first liver transplant three years later.
In 1978 he became the first person to use immunosuppressant ciclosporin, which went on to greatly improve outcomes of various transplants, it added.
Working with Prof John Wallwork, he conducted the earliest ever liver, heart and lung transplant nine years later at Royal Papworth Hospital, and in 1992 carried out the UK’s first intestinal transplant.
Two years after that he successfully performed a multi-visceral transplant combining stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver, and kidney cluster – another world first.
Half a century after completing first liver transplant in Europe, he told the PA news agency that he did not consider it a milestone at the time.
The operation, conducted at Addenbrooke’s Hospital on a 46-year-old woman with liver cancer, was thought to be just “one step” in developing transplants, he said in 2018.
Sir Roy added that he faced opposition while the surgery was arranged, and warned a culture of blame could deter fellow medics from trying to get involved in serious cases.
Despite a successful operation, the patient died two months later from lung inflammation.
Asked whether he had recognised the significance of the transplant, said: “We didn’t really look at it quite like that. We looked at it one step at a time.
“We could do the operation, does the immunosuppression work? Can we prevent the patient getting infected when they are in that poor state?”
Addressing fears over tackling complex cases, he said: “I think there is more caution, there’s more blame.
“If you did your best trying to treat somebody who had a lethal disease, and they died despite you doing your best, it was, I think, regarded as par of the course. That would happen. But now, people will immediately say, ‘whose fault is it?’”
In 2020, one of his many hundreds of patients, Angela Dunn, celebrated her half-century following a kidney transplant and told the Cambridge Independent that “before my operation I did not expect to make 30”.
An accomplished painter, Sir Roy’s work can be seen in several collections, including The Royal College of Surgeons and Trinity Hall.
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