Peter Friend obtained his medical degree from the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and has a doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2020.
After specialist training, he spent a year as Assistant Visiting Professor of Surgery, Indiana University, USA, initiating the Indiana University liver transplant programme, returning to the UK 1989 to a staff post at the University of Cambridge (Lecturer in Surgery, Consultant Surgeon); he was also Fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine, Magdalene College, Cambridge. He moved to the University of Oxford in 1999 as Professor of Transplantation, Director of the Oxford Transplant Centre and Fellow of Green Templeton College. He is a specialist in organ transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery, and heads a translational research group focusing on organ perfusion, novel immunosuppressive strategies and pancreas transplantation. He is author of scientific papers on clinical transplantation, immunosuppression, monoclonal antibodies, xenotransplantation, liver perfusion. He is a deputy editor of ‘Transplantation’. He is a Vice-president and Trustee of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a past-president of the British Transplantation Society. He is the Chief Medical Officer, and co-founder of OrganOx, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, established to develop novel ways to preserve and repair donor transplant organs.