Roy Yorke Calne

Life & Legacy

Sir Roy Yorke Calne (30 December 1930 – 6 January 2024) was a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. He was part of the team that performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, the world's first liver, heart and lung transplantation in 1987, the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992 and the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney cluster transplantation in 1994.
In 1960, Calne showed that 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) could prolong the survival of a transplanted kidney in a dog, and later showed that azathioprine was more effective. Through the mid-1960s, he worked to develop solutions in surgical techniques and organ rejection. In the late 1970s, he began to experiment with the immunosuppressant ciclosporin A, which was then introduced into regular use to prevent organ rejection.
Calne was elected to the Royal Society in 1974, and was awarded the 1988 Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded the 1984 Lister Medal, and knighted two years later. In 1990, he received the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine. In 2012, he shared a Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award with Thomas Starzl.