Waleed Hassanein

Dr. Waleed Hassanein founded TransMedics in 1998 to revolutionize organ transplant therapy for the treatment of end-stage lung, heart, and liver failure. Dr. Hassanein’s pioneering clinical research led to the development of an entirely new living organ preservation field for transplantation. Human organs could now be kept alive and functioning (heart beating, lung breathing, liver producing bile, etc.) outside of the human body in TransMedics’ revolutionary portable Organ Care System (OCS™) technology. Under his leadership, TransMedics has established itself as the global leader in living organ preservation and the OCS™ technology is becoming the new standard of care for solid organ transplantation. Dr. Hassanein was named as one of the top 50 Global Thinkers in Healthcare by Foreign Policy Magazine in 2015. He was the awardee of the Tribeca Disruptive Innovators Award in 2018 and was a finalist for the European Patent Office Inventor Award in 2017. Dr. Hassanein is a frequent guest speaker in national and international meetings on the future of organ preservation for transplantation. Dr. Hassanein earned his M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine. He completed two years of general surgery training at Georgetown University Medical Center. He then completed a three-year cardiac surgery research fellowship at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His research on ex-vivo heart perfusion for transplantation was recognized by the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in 1998.