Partner 10: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gewebetransplantation gGmbH (DGFG)

Tissue Bank

The German Society for Tissue Transplantation (DGFG) is an independent non-profit society and is the successor company of the DSO-G, founded in 1997 as a society of the German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO). Since 2007 the network has continued under the name DGFG supported by its new associates: the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden,  the University Hospital Leipzig and the University Hospital Rostock. The aim of the DGFG is to provide human tissue for transplantation that meets the needs of donors and their families, the recipients and the surgical community. DGFG assures allograft technology, safety and ethics to the highest standards and exceeds transplanting surgeons’ needs for quality and innovation in tissue recovery, processing and services. Furthermore, the DGFG also supports donors and their families by providing services, support and information on aspects concerning tissue donation. 

The DGFG participates as one of two tissue banks within ESPOIR and will be responsible for the procurement of fresh homografts for the production of DHV. The DGFG owns 3 tissue banks and cooperates with more than half of all eye and tissue banks throughout Germany. In 2015 the DGFG was able to supply 2.693 corneas, 169 valves and vessels and 1.476 amnion membranes in Germany. The DGFG has also run the first fully approved heart valve bank in Germany in a GMP facility. Since 2002 the DGFG organizes expert meetings, where common standards for heart valve processing have been developed to a common German standard, now adopted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Transfusionsmedizin und Immunhämatologie e.V (DGTI) and the Deutschen Transplantationsgesellschaft (DTG). 

Members of the DGFG have extensive experience in all tissue and organ donation and clinical studies and can contribute expertise quality management in tissue donation. An existing collaboration with corlife GbR established for the delivery of heart valves for quality control purposes is already in place which will be further developed and expanded within the ESPOIR project.          

Contributors to ESPOIR 

Martin Börgel, CEO