Photo - PG.jpegProfessor Paul Griffiths, a virologist who worked at the Royal Free Hospital for 38 years, has been named an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours.

Professor Griffiths, who said he was 'surprised and delighted' to receive the award, was honoured for services to virology. 

Before he retired in 2020, Professor Griffiths' work at the Royal Free Hospital centred around developing more effective ways of diagnosing and treating cytomegalovirus (CMV) in transplant patients. Those patients can be vulnerable to viruses since they take immune suppressing medication to prevent their transplant organs being rejected. If left untreated, CMV can cause debilitating illness and can be life threatening but thanks to Professor Griffiths' work, the virus is no longer a threat to patients. 

Professor Griffiths said: "I worked closely with the transplant teams at the Royal Free Hospital in improving care in this area. Because we developed a much quicker way of diagnosing and treating CMV in transplant patients, it led to greatly improved outcomes. This was thanks to decades of collaborative work with the liver, kidney and stem cell transplant teams.

"The MBE is a huge honour and I hope it can bring some attention to CMV because the next step is to develop a vaccine."

Transplantation is one of the three pillars of the trust's clinical strategy - you can read more about the clinical strategy here.