Professor Friend studied medicine at Cambridge University and St Thomas’s Hospital and, after qualifying, trained as a surgeon in London and Cambridge before undertaking a period of research at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Sir Roy Calne.

In 1988 he was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Surgery at Indiana University Medical Center, USA, where he was responsible for initiating a programme of liver transplantation.  He returned to the UK in 1989 to take up the post of University Lecturer (Honorary Consultant) in the University Department of Surgery at Cambridge. He was the Clinical Director of the Cambridge Transplant Unit and also a Fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine at Magdalene College, Cambridge. 

In 1999 he was appointed to the post of Professor of Transplantation at the University of Oxford and Consultant Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgeon at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.  At that time he was also appointed Director of the Oxford Transplant Centre. 

Over the last two decades, the numbers and types of transplants carried out in Oxford have increased.  The Unit now undertakes, kidney, kidney and pancreas, pancreas alone, islet and intestinal transplants.  Oxford is the largest (in terms of numbers of transplants carried out each year) pancreas transplant unit in Europe.    

Peter's research interests lie primarily in novel applications of normothermic organ perfusion, ranging from organ preservation and repair prior to transplantation to its use for extracorporeal support in acute liver failure. He has published over 300 papers relating to clinical transplantation, immunosuppression, monoclonal antibodies, xenotransplantation, isolated organ perfusion, as well as various aspects of general surgery.

Peter is one of two academic founders of OrganOx and currently its Chief Medical Officer, with responsibilities that include the pre-clinical and clinical studies of OrganOx's normothermic organ perfusion technology.