Ensuring Liver Transplant Viability

In this episode, Ben chats to Dr Sofia Ferreira-Gonzalez, CEO and co-founder of sensiBile, a biotechnology company spinning out from the University of Edinburgh as part of our inaugural Innovation Club.

Every year, hundreds of liver transplant globally are rejected by their recipient resulting in tragedy for the patient, the waste of a donor liver and another round of costly and invasive surgery. Sofia and her team are developing a ground-breaking device capable of analysing biomarkers in donor livers and comparing them to those taken from a biopsy from a potential host and to accurately assess the viability of transplantation.

Sofia shares with us the journey from her research, to becoming aware of the nature and scale of the problem of transplant rejection, her work with surgeons validating the market, eventually spinning out sensiBile and the next steps for her and the company.