Fungai Dengu

I’m an Academic Clinical Lecturer and general surgery registrar specialising in transplant surgery.  My clinical interest is multi-organ transplant surgery and application of novel machine perfusion technologies. I read Medicine University of Edinburgh with an intercalated degree in Neurosciences. My foundation training was also in Edinburgh prior to embarking on (core) surgical training I London. I was appointed to a registrar post in Oxford, where I completed my DPhil (Trinity) in Surgical Sciences and recently begun my post-doctoral academic training position within the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences. I’m an active member of Oxford University Global Surgery Group and faculty on the Oxford Global Surgery course.

I teach medical students at Trinity during their clinical years covering the surgical curriculum. I also provide support with clinical projects.

Within the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences (NDS) I mark clinical case reports for clinical medical students and have supervised SSC and FHS students within Transplant Surgery and Global Surgery.

I support clinical research fellows doing projects within the transplant research group focused on liver perfusion and I am also DPhil supervisor.

My clinical and research interests are predominantly in the field of solid organ transplantation and in particular, related to organ preservation technologies. My DPhil thesis was focused on immuno-molecular profiling and modulation of donor livers during normothermic machine perfusion and this has been the basis of my current research as an Academic Clinical Lecturer (ACL).

Novel technologies such as machine perfusion have facilitated a greater utilisation of potential donor livers with reduced injury and longer preservation times while enabling graft assessment and providing an opportunity for interventions. We are investigating the application of a novel apheresis column (NucleoCapture) during machine perfusion to remove chromatin-based inflammatory endogenous molecules (e.g cell free DNA & Nucleosomes) and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in various contexts as a means of further improving organs for transplantation.

Friend PJ, Dengu F. Expanding the Scope of Donation After Circulatory Death Liver Transplantation. Liver Transpl. 2021 Feb;27(3):325-326. doi: 10.1002/lt.25924. Epub 2020 Nov 22.

PMID: 33098747

SARS-CoV-2-Specific T Cell Responses Are Not Associated with Protection against Reinfection in   Hemodialysis Patients.

Shankar S, Beckett J, Tipton T, Ogbe A, Kasanyinga M, Dold C, Lumley S, Dengu F, Rompianesi G, Elgilani F, Longet S, Deeks A, Payne RP, Duncan CJA, Richter A, de Silva TI, Turtle L, Bull K, Barnardo M, Friend PJ, Dunachie SJ, Hester J, Issa F, Barnes E, Carroll MW, Klenerman P. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2022 May;33(5):883-887. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2021121587. Epub 2022 Mar 31.

PMID: 35361708

Abdominal Multiorgan Procurement from Slaughterhouse Pigs: A Bespoke Model in Organ Donation After Circulatory Death for Ex-Vivo Organ Perfusion compliant with the 3 Rs. Fungai Dengu, Flavia Neri, Etohan Ogbemudia, Georg Ebeling, Laura Knijff, Kaithlyn Rozenberg, Richard Dumbill, Julien Branchereau, Peter Friend, Rutger Ploeg, James Hunter, Ann Transl Med 2022 Jan;10(1):1. doi: 10.21037/atm-21-2494.

PMID: 35242846

Normothermic Machine Perfusion (NMP) of the Liver as a Platform for Therapeutic Interventions during Ex-Vivo Liver Preservation: A Review Dengu F, Abbas SH, Ebeling G, Nasralla D.. J Clin Med. 2020;9(4):1046. Published 2020 Apr 7. doi:10.3390/jcm9041046

PMID: 32272760.

Dengu F. Next-generation sequencing methods to detect donor-derived cell-free DNA after transplantation. Transplant Rev (Orlando). 2020;34(3):100542. doi:10.1016/j.trre.2020.100542

The novel use of the Haemodialysis reliable outflow graft (HeRo®) in intestinal failure patients with end-stage vascular access Dengu F, Hunter J, Vrakas G, Gilbert J.. J Vasc Access. 2020 Sep 30:1129729820961972. doi: 10.1177/1129729820961972. Epub ahead of print.