Pioneering kidney transplant project launches as milestone social enterprise spin-out
Published: 12 March 2025
KEPsoft Collaborative - the first social enterprise company to spin out from the University - will help save lives by providing software and services to better match kidney patients with donors.
A life-saving project set up to better match kidney patients with organ donors has launched as a social enterprise company – the first not-for-profit social-purpose venture to spin out from the University of Glasgow.
KEPsoft Collaborative - the product of four founding European research institutions - will provide software and services to increase the possibilities for kidney patients to find a life-changing match with a living kidney donor.
The founding members behind the not-for-profit venture are: Portuguese research institute INESC TEC; the Budapest-based HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (KRTK); Óbuda University; and the University of Glasgow.
The new company will address the devastating impact kidney failure can have on patients’ lives and the acute shortage of living donors for transplantations that offer much better long-term survival prospects compared to dialysis.
Software developed by the company’s founding members has been used by national organisations that run kidney exchange programmes (KEPs) within their respective countries to optimise the number of matching donors within the population.
KEPs help to increase living donations by allowing recipients who require a kidney transplant, and who have a willing but medically incompatible donor, to ‘swap’ their donor with that of another recipient, leading to a cycle of transplants. Non-directed donors may trigger chains of transplants that can also benefit multiple recipients.
In the UK, algorithms developed by Professor David Manlove and his colleagues have been used to find optimal solutions for the UK Living Kidney Sharing Scheme (UKLKSS), which is the largest KEP in Europe and operated by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT).
Between 2008 and 2024, it is estimated the algorithms led to 600 more kidney transplants taking place, compared to the estimated number that would have occurred had the previous algorithm continued to be used.
Initially, the focus will be on European transplant organisations, but KEPsoft Collaborative will also engage with organisations beyond Europe, where there are still many countries without KEPs. Indeed, it is estimated that approximately 850 million people worldwide have kidney disease.
A new project involving KEPsoft partners will support the establishment and improvement of national and international kidney exchange programmes in Europe.
This project, named EURO-KEP and led by the Organización Nacional de Trasplantes (Spanish National Transplant Organisation) and co-funded by the European Union under the framework of the EU4Health programme, will leverage and further customise the KEPsoft platform. The team has also been supported through the award of a prize from the Converge Create Change Challenge in the 2024 competition.
Vijay Luthra, CEO of KEPsoft Collaborative and himself a renal transplantee, said: "The social enterprise model allows us to focus on the needs of the most important stakeholders, namely kidney patients waiting for a transplant. It also recognises the collaborative nature of the work, including by our founding members.
“Our goal is to make kidney transplantation more accessible to patients around Europe and beyond, and to that end we are most grateful for the financial and operational support provided by The Challenges Group Ventures Lab and by Community Enterprise in Scotland (CEIS).”
Professor David Manlove of the University of Glasgow, and Scientific Adviser to KEPsoft Collaborative, said: “Beyond the founding institutions, the project has enjoyed wide collaboration including the ENCKEP COST Action (funded by the European Union) which had 28 participating countries.
“KEPsoft has also had input from stakeholders from a range of disciplines, including policy makers, clinicians, surgeons, nephrologists, immunologists, computer scientists and economists.”
University of Glasgow, Head of Commercialisation Mel Anderson, said: “The KEPsoft software platform has the potential to transform lives by significantly improving the number of kidney transplants through optimising donor-to-patient matching.
“With its partner universities in Portugal and Hungary, the University of Glasgow has created KEPsoft Collaborative, a not-for-profit social enterprise to drive deployment and adoption of this important platform. This is the first of the University’s not for profit social enterprise ventures aimed at delivering social good from research-led innovation. We wish the KEPsoft team every success.”
Title image (above): Pictured left to right, Sheena MacCormick, IP & Innovation Manager at the University of Glasgow; Dr William Pettersson, KEPsoft Collaborative Chief Technology Officer; Vijay Luthra, KEPsoft Collaborative Chief Executive Officer; Professor David Manlove, KEPsoft Collaborative Scientific Adviser; and Natasha Tian, Senior Partnerships Manager MVLS Innovation, Engagement & Enterprise (University of Glasgow).
First published: 12 March 2025