Clinical
scientist and academic who pioneered groundbreaking cooling techniques for use
in organ transplantation
I met and spoke to David Pegg many times in the course of Palestine solidarity
work, together with his partner, Monica Wusterman. He was a modest man, a dedicated and
committed supporter of the Palestinians as well as a brilliant scientist. Below are obituaries from BRICUP – the British Committee for the Universities
of Palestine and The Guardian. He will
be sorely missed.
Tony Greenstein
OBITUARY- David Pegg.
Colin Green and Monica
Wusteman
BRICUP is
very sad to announce the death on August 3rd of David Pegg. David, a member of
our committee, initiated our Newsletter and edited it for almost a decade.
Dedicated to the cause of Palestinian rights, he also campaigned tirelessly on
a number of fronts, including lobbying members of European Parliament, EU
diplomats and members of the Commission on behalf of both
BRICUP and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD). David was
also one of the founder members of York Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a
Trustee of IMET 2000, an international medical education charity which deals
with the training of surgeons, nurses, physicians and with those dealing with
the child victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity. IMET 2000 operates
extensively in the West Bank and Gaza. (https://www.imet2000.org/)
David was
also a very eminent clinical scientist with an international reputation. One of
the pioneers in the field of low temperature biology, David made perhaps his
greatest contribution through research into the preservation of human kidneys.
He and his colleagues worked up simple flushing techniques to sophisticated
methods which are now used worldwide and allow organs to be maintained for up
to thirty hours and function well after transplantation.
Later he
pioneered new freezing techniques that have proved to be helpful in preserving
plant cells for agriculture, fish reproductive cells for fish farming and, in
the field of conservation, cells from endangered species of plants and animals.
David
graduated from Westminster Medical School in 1956. He was awarded his MD in
1963, his MRC Path in 1967, the William Julius Mickle Fellowship in 1968 and
FRC Path in 1998. At the Westminster Medical School he began to work on organ
transplantation alongside the transplantation pioneer Roy Calne, an experience
that led to his career in low temperature biology.
He joined
the Medical Research Council at Mill Hill in 1967 and, in 1970 was promoted to
Head of Division of Cryobiology in the newly built MRC Clinical Research Centre
in Harrow. He moved to Cambridge in 1978 to work once more alongside Roy Calne
as Head of the MRC Medical Cryobiology Group in the University Dept of Surgery.
In 1992 he set up the East Anglia Tissue Bank in the National Blood Service in
Cambridge and was Director for a year. He then moved to York and was Director
of the Medical Cryobiology Unit in the University from 1993 to August 2006. He
was an Honorary Professor in the Biology Department from 1999 to 2018.
In the
whole field of low temperature biology, David was unique in his eclectic
understanding. To add to this he had a great capacity to inspire and support
young scientists in the field and many hundreds owe their own careers to him.
Clinical scientist and academic
who pioneered groundbreaking cooling techniques for use in organ
transplantation
Tue 15 Oct 2019
David Pegg
made perhaps his greatest contribution through research into the preservation
of human kidneys, which he began in 1965
In the early
days of organ transplantation one of the thorniest problems facing medical
science was how to keep an organ functional in the period between harvesting it
from a donor and inserting it into a grateful recipient. David Pegg, who has
died aged 86, did much towards solving that conundrum, and so enabled us to
take for granted our capacity to stop the clock of life by freezing or cooling
an organ before restarting its normal function.
One of the
pioneers in the field of low temperature biology – building on the work of
Audrey Smith, Christopher Polge and Peter Mazur – David made perhaps his
greatest contribution through research into the preservation of human kidneys,
which he began in 1965.
From dubious
survival times of eight hours or fewer, by using simple surface cooling through
surrounding the kidney in ice, he and his colleagues at the Medical Research
Council (MRC) in north London
worked on techniques whereby a plastic tube was inserted into the renal artery
and the organ was flushed with a cold solution of balanced salts and nutrients
to cool it from within. This was far more efficient.
As a further
step, David developed sophisticated continuous perfusion methods, getting
fluids to pass through a closed circuit that could be used to cool the kidney,
and even mimic blood to provide oxygen and essential nutrients. Both techniques
are now used routinely in organ transplantation services worldwide and allow
organs to be maintained for up to 30 hours and function well after
transplantation. Later he pioneered new freezing techniques that have proved to
be helpful in preserving plant cells for agriculture, fish reproductive cells
for fish farming and, in the field of conservation, cells from endangered
species of plants and animals.
Born in
Chester, David was the son of Philip, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Evelyn
(nee Middleton), a teacher. He went to Dr Challoner’s grammar school in
Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and then King’s College London to study medicine. He
did his clinical undergraduate studies at Westminster medical school in London
and after graduating in 1956 served in the school’s teaching group for a year,
before working in its department of pathology for a decade from 1957,
specialising in haematology.
It was at
Westminster medical school that David first became intrigued by all the
possibilities of organ transplantation and started working with the surgeon and
organ transplant pioneer Roy Calne. They were faced with two big problems: how to prevent
rejection of an organ once it had been transplanted and how to prevent damage
to an organ once a potential donor had died. While Calne set about working on
the former, David addressed the latter, spending much of the rest of his career
concentrating on tissue and organ preservation.
In 1967 he
left Westminster to join Smith, the leading scientist in the field at the time,
as a senior scientist in the division of low temperature biology at the MRC’s
clinical research laboratories in Mill Hill. Three years later he was promoted
to head of cryobiology – the study of the effects of low temperatures on living
things – at the MRC’s new clinical research centre at Northwick Park hospital,
Harrow, and remained there until attracted to Cambridge by Calne to become head
of the MRC’s medical cryobiology group in 1978.
He stayed
there until 1992, when he set up the East Anglia Tissue Bank at the National
Blood Service in Cambridge, serving as its director for a year. Then he was
director of the medical cryobiology unit at York University (1993-2006), and an
honorary professor in the biology department (1999-2018).
Recognising
the potential global impact that cryobiology could have so many areas, he was a
key figure in the field, setting up the international Society for Cryobiology
in 1964, helping to start its journal, Cryobiology, of which he later became
editor in chief, and becoming the society’s president in 1974.
Two years
earlier he had visited Ukraine to set up collaborations with low temperature
scientists that endure today. He also pursued other links with the then Soviet
bloc in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and helped many young scientists
behind the iron curtain to expand their research vision. He had a general
interest in justice and human rights and studied the possibilities for international
conflict resolution, particularly in the Middle East. In 1965 David founded the
British Society for Low Temperature
Biology, which has now expanded to cover Europe, and twice served as its
secretary.
In 1977 he
married Monica Wusteman. She survives him, along with their children, Owen and
Elly, his sons Andrew, Tim and Simon, from his first marriage, to June (nee
Gossett), which ended in divorce, two grandsons and four granddaughters.
• David
Pegg, clinical scientist, born 22 June 1933; died 3 August 2019
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