News & Events

Successful downstaging of selected patients with HCC (hepatocellular carcinoma) before liver transplantation leads to excellent 5-year recurrence-free and overall survival rates post-transplant, according to a just-reported multicenter study led by UCSF Transplant Program investigators. Medscape Medical News...

UCSF News reports on research led by Minnie Sarwal, MD, PhD, Director of the Sarwal Lab, in developing a test for diagnosing and predicting acute rejection (AR) in kidney transplants, a finding that eventually could replace the need for biopsies and lead to earlier detection of AR and treatment. 'We have found a...

Flavio Vincenti, M.D., UCSF Professor of Medicine and Surgery and a kidney and pancreas transplant specialist, is the principal investigator on a new seven-year, $17 million multicenter study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The goal of the study is to determine if certain immune system cells...

In another demonstration of the Department of Surgery 's commitment to global health and outreach, UCSF transplant surgeon Andrew M. Posselt, M.D., Ph.D. , recently travelled to Cali, Colombia to help lay the groundwork for a laparoscopic donor nephrectomy program at the Fundacion Clinica Valle del Lili, a leading...

"Researchers studying the effects of immune suppressant drugs on transplant patients with HIV have made a surprising discovery: A drug intended to hobble the body's defense system may actually help destroy dormant reservoirs of the virus that causes AIDS In a paper published this week in the American Journal of...

UCSF News reports on the work of Qizhi Tang, Ph.D., and other UC San Francisco researchers to develop new organ transplant strategies that better prevent rejection of donated organs. The research of Dr. Tang, Associate Professor in the Division of Transplant Surgery, and Director of the Transplantation Research...

A recent paper in the journal Nature, reported by UCSF News by a research team including Associate Professor Holger Willenbring, M.D., Ph.D. and Senior Resident Jack Harbell, M.D., a former postdoctoral fellow in the Willenbring lab, reports a new method of cellular reprogramming with potential for treating liver...

Intrahepatic bile duct cancer, a rare and deadly form of cancer, known formally as cholangiocarcinoma, has been assumed to derive from cells in the bile ducts of the liver. However, a n international team, led by Holger F. Willenbring, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology in the...

Last year, a team led by Dr. Peter Stock of UCSF reported on results from a large multicenter study testing the safety and feasibility of transplanting kidneys where both the donor and recipients were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The results, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine...

UCSF scientists have received two large grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to refine their human embryonic stem cell-based strategies for treating neurological diseases and liver failure. A team led by Mark Zern, MD, of the University of California, Davis, and including co-principal...

Dr. Nancy Ascher and Dr. Holger Willenbring were interviewed by PBS NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michaels about the transformation of embryonic stem cells into new liver cells as a treatment for patients.

"The body's rejection of transplanted organs and tissues is an unfortunate risk of transplant surgery. Historically, rejection rates in a simultaneous pancreas-kidney (SPK) transplant have been as high as 80% and, in 2001, averaged nearly 20%. ........Diabetes Center surgeons Peter Stock, (left) and Chris Freise...