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Terumo Completes $1.5B Acquisition of OrganOx, Signaling New Era in Organ Preservation
Time : 2025-11-07
October 30, 2025 – Global medical technology giant Terumo Corporation announced the successful completion of its acquisition of UK-based OrganOx, in a deal valued at approximately $1.5 billion (equivalent to around RMB 10.6 billion). This transaction makes OrganOx a fully owned subsidiary of Terumo and marks a significant milestone as organ preservation technology enters a new phase of focused attention from both capital and industry sectors.
Notably, this represents the second major merger and acquisition (M&A) in the organ preservation space within the past 12 months. In 2024, Getinge acquired Paragonix for $477 million. In just one year, two global leaders in extracorporeal circulation have successively completed M&A integrations, nearly simultaneously targeting the previously long-overlooked niche of "explant organ preservation and transportation." From a market perspective, these consecutive moves send a clear signal: the "organ life management system" is emerging as the next scalable medical innovation track.
A $1.5B Strategic Acquisition
Terumo first announced its acquisition intent in August 2025, and following the completion of the transaction, OrganOx will operate as an independent subsidiary under Terumo's "Life Systems Business Group."值得注意的是, Terumo had already participated in OrganOx's $142 million funding round in March 2025 through its venture capital arm, Terumo Ventures, indicating that this acquisition is a "deepening of strategic holdings" rather than a purely financial investment.
According to a joint statement, the OrganOx team will maintain independent operations and continue to be headquartered in Oxford, UK. Terumo will leverage its global supply chain, registration systems, and market channels to accelerate the access and deployment of OrganOx's products in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and other regions. "Our mission has always been to ensure every organ can be effectively utilized," said Craig Marshall, CEO of OrganOx. "By joining Terumo, we will be able to achieve this goal on a much larger scale."
From Refrigeration to "Physiological Maintenance"
OrganOx's core technology is Normothermic Machine Perfusion (NMP). This system maintains excised organs in a near-body temperature "viable state" by circulating perfusate containing oxygen and nutrients, thereby preserving metabolic activity, enabling visual assessment, and facilitating functional monitoring during preservation and transportation.
Its flagship product, the Metra Liver Preservation System, received FDA approval in 2021 and officially launched in the United States in 2022. To date, it has been used in over 6,000 liver transplant surgeries worldwide. Compared with traditional Static Cold Storage (SCS), NMP offers two key advantages: extended preservation time – from approximately 8 hours to more than 24 hours; and assessable status – real-time monitoring during circulation allows doctors to evaluate functional activity, thus avoiding "transplantation of compromised organs."
This change, though seemingly a technical detail, actually reshapes the management logic of organ transplantation. In the past, once an organ was excised, it entered a "countdown"; with the NMP system, it exists in an intermediate state of "sustained life." This not only increases the utilization rate of marginal donors but also transforms "organ matching" from a passive race against time to active regulation.
Why Giants Enter the Fray
Organ preservation is a typical field with "constant clinical demand but scarce technological innovation." According to WHO statistics, more than 100,000 people worldwide wait for organ transplants each year, but less than one-third ultimately receive a donor organ. Among the organs already harvested, the proportion discarded due to preservation failure or functional impairment still exceeds 20%. Therefore, every advancement in preservation technology translates to substantial clinical benefits.
This explains why, amid tight capital conditions in 2025, the total value of the two organ preservation company acquisitions still reached nearly $2 billion. Terumo has long held a leading position in the cardiovascular and extracorporeal circulation fields, with its product portfolio including heart-lung machines, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) systems, and hemoperfusion equipment.
The acquisition of OrganOx extends Terumo's business from "sustaining life" to "extending organ life" on the basis of "organ extracorporeal circulation." In Terumo's strategic narrative, this shift demonstrates high consistency: vertical extension – from intraoperative support to preoperative preparation and postoperative management, forming comprehensive "organ lifecycle" coverage; horizontal integration – combining the company's engineering foundation in blood management and life support equipment to build a unified perfusion platform across organs; global synergy – leveraging its market network in more than 120 countries to bring large-scale registration and service capabilities to OrganOx's products.
For OrganOx, joining Terumo means transitioning from a technology-focused company to a system-oriented one – no longer just providing a preservation device, but becoming an "organ management node" embedded in the global transplantation network.
Capital Reshaping the Technology Landscape
Over the past few years, organ preservation technology has experienced a significant turning point: it has evolved from a "transplant supporting link" to a technology track independently evaluated and with high growth potential. Taking the two transactions in 2024-2025 as examples: Getinge × Paragonix ($477 million) focused on low-temperature portable transportation systems to improve the "preoperative end"; Terumo × OrganOx ($1.5 billion) entered the normothermic circulation system to connect the "preservation and evaluation end."
These two giants have almost simultaneously completed the upstream and downstream integration of organ preservation, marking the first emergence of a preliminary closed loop from "harvesting to transplantation." In the transplant medicine system where surgical technology is already extremely mature, the links truly amenable to improvement are shifting from intraoperative to preoperative – precisely the structural space valued by capital.
From a commercial perspective, OrganOx's value lies not only in its technological leadership but also in its scalability. The company's under-development kidney perfusion system is planned for commercialization by 2030, with future expansion potential to lungs, hearts, and other organs. This means its underlying perfusion and monitoring platform is expected to become a "multi-organ platform," providing standardized interfaces for the entire transplant ecosystem. Within Terumo's structure, this platform will form technological resonance with its heart-lung machines and ECMO systems, constructing a complete "organ life support matrix."
This is also a common strategic direction for global surgical equipment companies: transforming from "product manufacturers" to "system providers," and expanding from "surgical equipment" to "life management systems."
From Innovation Path to Regulatory Window
In China, organ transplantation and preservation are also in a phase of rapid development. As of 2024, the number of organ transplants in China has ranked second in the world for consecutive years, second only to the United States. However, in the preservation link, most domestic institutions still adopt traditional low-temperature static preservation solutions, and the clinical application of dynamic perfusion equipment is still in the exploration stage.
Currently, multiple domestic enterprises have entered this field, but there remains a lack of clear regulations from registration pathways to payment systems. The integration of Terumo and OrganOx may become an important reference for Chinese regulatory authorities to evaluate similar products. It verifies the safety and clinical value of the "normothermic perfusion + real-time monitoring" system and provides international evidence pathways for domestic innovative products.
In the future, if domestic innovative enterprises can achieve breakthroughs in perfusate formulations, sensor interfaces, or localized control systems, they will have the opportunity to establish independent technological advantages before the regulatory classification system is fully solidified.
