News & Events

UCSF surgeon-scientist Johannes R. Kratz, M.D. was awarded the Inaugural Hellman Family Clinical-Translational Research Development Award from the Bakar ImmunoX initiative. This development award embeds a young investigator in an ImmunoX CoLab for two years in order to rapidly translate clinical insights into molecular-level understanding of disease. Dr. Kratz was given this prestigious award for the study of tumor immune populations in high-risk early-stage lung cancer.   The Kratz Lab focuses on the genetic and immunological mechanisms that drive early-stage, surgically resectable [...]

Julius Guccione, Jr., Ph.D., Professor of Surgery and Co-Director of the UCSF Cardiac Biomechanics Lab, was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows at its annual meeting in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2019. Guccione was one of four UCSF faculty members inducted this year. Comprised of just the top two percent of engineers in the field, election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to medical and biological engineers. Guccione's research focuses on the development of devices for [...]

Technique Prevents Transplant Rejection in the Lab, a Major Advance for Stem Cell Therapies  Human heart muscle cells derived from triple-engineered stem cells that are "invisible" to the immune system. The red is troponin, a protein that participates in cardiac muscle contraction. The blue is the cell's nucleus. Researchers hope cells like these will eventually be used to treat heart failure. Credit: Xiaomeng Hu. UC San Francisco scientists have used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system to create the first pluripotent stem cells that are functionally "invisible" to the immune system, [...]

Sonja Schrepfer, M.D., Ph.D. and Tobias Deuse, M.D. have been awarded a 4-Year $3M NIH R01 Grant to study the role of cardiomyocytes in heart repair. Dr. Schrepfer is an associate professor and director of the UCSF Transplant and Stem Cell Immunobiology (TSI) Lab. Dr. Deuse, a renowned heart surgeon, is associate professor and director of minimally-invasive cardiac surgery at UCSF and a principal investigator in the TSI lab.  The study will generate hypo-immunogenic cardiomyocytes that could be used therapeutically for regenerating tissues but are engineered to avoid rejection by patients [...]

A team led by Bhairavi Tolani, Ph.D. and David M. Jablons, M.D. has developed and characterized a potential novel therapeutic for Sonic hedgehog (Shh)-driven cancers, including some lung cancers. Dr. Tolani is an assistant professor and member of the Thoracic Oncology Program, and principal investigator in the Tolani Laboratory. Dr. Jablons is director of the Thoracic Oncology Program and Thoracic Oncology Lab.  The researchers reported last October that full-length Shh protein present on the cell membrane identified cells with cancer stem cell (CSC) features implicated in NSCLC. To target [...]

The Thoracic Oncology Program proudly announces the launch of the Kratz Lab, which will focus on understanding the genetic and immunological mechanisms that drive early-stage, surgically resectable thoracic malignancies, most notably non-small cell lung cancer. The translationally-focused Kratz Lab will use the knowledge gained from investigating these mechanisms to identify novel therapeutic targets and treatments for this group of patients.  Johannes R. Kratz, M.D., assistant professor in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery and Van Auken Endowed Chair in Thoracic Oncology, is the [...]

Sonja Schrepfer, M.D., Ph.D. and Tobias Deuse, M.D. have been awarded a 4-year $2.4M NIH grant by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to investigate space-related physiological changes, analogous to those observed during aging, including defects in bone healing, loss of cardiovascular and neurological capacity, and altered immune function. Dr. Schrepfer is associate professor and director of the UCSF Transplant and Stem Cell Immunobiology (TSI) Lab. Dr. Deuse is associate professor and director of minimally-invasive cardiac surgery at UCSF. He is also [...]

Johannes R. Kratz, M.D. has been named the new Van Auken Endowed Chair in Thoracic Oncology. Kratz is an assistant professor in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery, a member of the Thoracic Oncology Program, and director of Advanced Minimally Invasive Thoracic Surgery.  The Van Auken Endowed Chair supports research, teaching and service in the field of thoracic oncology. Kratz has excelled in all three areas. As a research fellow at UCSF, he was instrumental in the development of a prognostic assay for early-stage lung cancer, working on a team led by David M. Jablons, [...]

Brad Dell relives the exhilirating and captivating events leading up to his lung transplant surgery at UCSF on its one-year anniversary. His riveting account appears at Cystic Fibrosis News Today.  Jan. 14, 2017 was the worst day of anxiety I'd had in the five months of waiting for my lung transplant. A frantic, nearly palpable tension was in the air. After five confident months believing the "light at the end of the tunnel" was rebirth, rather than death, I suddenly broke. I simply didn't think I had the strength to make it to transplant. I refused to communicate with my parents most of [...]

Tobias Deuse, M.D., associate professor of surgery and director of minimally-invasive cardiac surgery at UCSF, has been named The Julien I. E. Hoffman, M.D. Chair in Cardiac Surgery. Dr. Deuse, a cardiac and heart transplant surgeon, is internationally renowned for his pioneering work in the development of minimally-invasive techniques for mitral and aortic valve repair, demonstrating high success rates in mitral valve repair utilizing robotic-assisted (fully) endoscopic surgery or "keyhole surgery". Dr. Deuse is also a principal investigator in the Transplant and Stem Cell Immunobiology [...]

Dr. Tobias Deuse was recruited to UCSF from the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf, one of the leading mitral valve centers in Germany. He is excited by UCSF's team approach to complex heart disease, and recently led the establishment at UCSF of a combined clinic where patients see both an interventional cardiologist and cardiac surgeon on the same day; the specialists then consult with each other and tailor a treatment plan for each patient's unique situation. If patients meet with a doctor who tells them one thing, and then the next doctor tells them something completely different, they go [...]

UCSF Medical Center earned "high performance" ratings – the highest ratings possible – in eight common conditions and procedures in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Survey for 2017-2018, seven within the UCSF Department of Surgery: Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair Aortic Valve Surgery Colon Cancer Surgery Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Heart Bypass Surgery Heart Failure Lung Cancer Surgery U.S. News evaluated more than 4,500 hospitals to determine how well they performed using data on patient survival, nurse staffing, volume and more. Within the [...]

UCSF News reports on research into the effects of space travel, known and unknown, to the physiology and bodies of astronauts traveling about the international space station (ISS). The research has profound implications for longer trips to distant planets, notably NASA's goal of flying a manned spacecraft to Mars. Research into the novel and myriad effects of space travel on humans will be critical to the success of this endeavor. Three faculty in the UCSF Department of Surgery and an esteemed collaborator in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, were among the researchers [...]

Johannes R. Kratz, M.D. and Yeranuí Ledesma, M.D. are among this year's recipients of the 2017 UCSF Health Exceptional Physician Award. Dr. Kratz, now a member of the Thoracic Oncology Program and Assistant Professor in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery, and Dr. Ledesma, a Senior Resident in General Surgery, were among 8 winners out of 61 nominees, notably the only clinical fellow and resident, respectively, at UCSF to receive the award, and the only recipients not on the faculty.  The official announcement reads: We are delighted to announce the 2017 UCSF Health Exceptional [...]

The Department of Surgery welcomes Johannes R. Kratz, M.D. to the faculty as Assistant Professor in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery and member of the Thoracic Oncology Program. Dr. Kratz was a surgical research fellow in the UCSF Thoracic Oncology Laboratory from 2008-2011 where he played a key role in the research leading to the development of a prognostic assay for early-stage lung cancer by a team led by David M. Jablons, M.D. and Michael Mann, M.D., a test now in widespread clinical use. He returned to UCSF in 2014, completing his advanced training as a clinical fellow in [...]

Sonja Schrepfer, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of the UCSF Transplant and Stem Cell Immunobiology (TSI) Lab, was recently awarded a grant  by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to engineer a "Hypo-Immunogenic Cardiac Patches for Myocardial Regeneration". The funding is part of CIRM's Discovery: Inception program is for seed funding for great ideas that have the potential to impact human stem cell research, funding that will enable the researchers to test their ideas, and generate preliminary data to support for greater funding. Dr. Schrepfer proposed [...]

ABC News San Francisco (KGO) reports on the case of a Utah man, recovering from a lung transplant in Pennsylvania after a Utah hospital refused to put him on their transplant list because of past marijuana use. (The man subsequently died after the airing of the KGO story.) UCSF transplant surgeon, Ryutaro Hirose, M.D., was interviewed by KGO and regarding the policy on this is issue at UCSF. "We've recently liberalized our criteria regarding marijuana," said Dr. Ryutaro Hirose who is a transplant surgeon at UCSF, the country's busiest transplant center. Unlike the hospital in Utah, UCSF [...]

Becker's Hospital Review reports that the UCSF Kidney, Liver, and Lung Transplant Programs each received the highest score "5", "Better than Expected" for transplant outcomes*, based on the most recent data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR). These scores were evaluated using SRTR's new "5-Tier Outcome Assessment".  The number of organ transplants performed in the U.S. hit a record high in 2016, with 33,606 transplants performed, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. But not all transplant centers were created equal — some have much better patient [...]

The Transplant and Stem Cell Immunobiology (TSI) Lab at UCSF has officially launched its new website. Its two principal investigators, Sonja Schrepfer, M.D., Ph.D., Lab Director and Associate Professor of Surgery, and Tobias Deuse, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery and Director of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery, both of the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery, conduct research to answer complex questions about stem cell therapy, heart and lung transplantation, and cardiovascular disease, with the goal of translating basic science discoveries into downstream medical [...]

September 29 - 30th at Hotel Nikko - San Francisco, CA Course Chair John P. Roberts, M.D.Professor and Chief, Division of Transplantation, UCSF Course Co-Chairs Michelle McMahan, BAHelen Christensen, RN, BSN, MHA, CPTC Heart • Lung • Liver • Kidney • Pancreas  The two-day conference is designed to provide a unique opportunity to hear UCSF Transplant experts present a comprehensive review and update on recent advances in adult and pediatric transplantation. Leaders in the field will share their medical and surgical expertise in solid organ transplant and living donor [...]