Sir Roy Calne to give Strauss Lecture

	Sir Roy Calne

Sir Roy Calne, a pioneer of transplantation surgery, will give the 49^th annual Alfred A. Strauss Lecture for the UW Department of Surgery.

He will speak on “Immunological Tolerance: From the Laboratory to the Clinic” at 4 p.m., Friday, Sept. 11, in room D-209 of the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is free and open to everyone.

Known as Sir Roy since he was knighted in 1986, he has been a key figure in establishing lifesaving transplantation as part of routine clinical practice through his work on drugs to suppress organ rejection. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in the 1970s.

He trained at Guys Hospital in London and then began his research in organ transplantation in 1959 at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, where he described the first effective immunosupression for kidney transplantation, using a drug called 6-mecaptopurine. In 1962 he first used a derivative of that drug in human patients, a treatment later adopted as standard.

Sir Roy and his team also pioneered the use of cyclosporin A, the drug which was so successful in preventing rejection that transplantation of hearts, livers and lungs became common.

In 1965, when he became professor of surgery at the University of Cambridge, he started the kidney transplant program there, which has now performed more than 1,500 procedures. In 1968, he started the first European liver transplant program, and he is also credited with the first pancreas and intestinal transplants in the United Kingdom. He is regarded as a specialist in pediatric liver transplantation.

He is also well known as an artist, and exhibitions of his paintings have been held in more than 10 countries since 1991. He became interested in portraying the image of transplantation after he became friends with the distinguished Scottish artist John Bellany, who had a liver transplant in his program in 1988. His paintings capture the more human side of his profession and have helped raise public awareness of the need for more organ donation.

In his book Art, Surgery and Transplantation, Sir Roy has written about the history of art and medicine and the natural link between surgeons and art.

“Both require careful planning, skill and technique and familiarity with the available tools and materials,” he has written. “However, a bad image can be discarded without regret; a choice that is not available when dealing with the life of a patient. In both disciplines, the challenge to do better is always present, but perfection will never be achieved.”

The lecture honors the late Dr. Alfred A. Strauss, a 1904 UW graduate who went on to earn an M.D. degree at Rush Medical College of Chicago. As an indication of his continued interest in the UW, Strauss began sponsoring annual surgical lectureships at the School of Medicine in 1950. Today, sponsorship of the Strauss Lecture is maintained by Margery Friedlander, Strauss’s daughter. ¶