Fungai Dengu

I’m an Academic Clinical Lecturer (ACL) and hepatobiliary and pancreatic (HPB) surgery registrar, specialising in Transplant Surgery.  

My clinical interest is in multi-organ transplant surgery and the application of novel machine perfusion technologies. I studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, with an intercalated honours degree in Neuroscience. My foundation training was also in Edinburgh prior to embarking on core surgical training (CST) in London. I was appointed to a higher surgical training (HST) post in Oxford, where I completed my DPhil (Trinity) in Surgical Sciences. I have since been appointed into a post-doctoral clinical 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, HPB and Global Surgery. 

I support clinical research fellows doing projects within the Oxford 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. 

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 and other extra corporeal contexts to remove chromatin-based inflammatory endogenous molecules (e.g cell free DNA, Nucleosomes and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs)) as a means of further improving organs for transplantation and protecting them from inflammatory injury. 

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.