News & Events

Kai Ihnken, M.D. has been awarded the Inaugural UCSF Thoracic Residency Program Teaching Award for FY2018-2019, in recognition of his outstanding teaching efforts for thoracic surgery residents inside and outside of the OR. Dr. Kai Ihnken is cardiac and heart transplant surgeon who specializes in advanced state-of...

UCSF surgeon-scientist Johannes R. Kratz, M.D. has been awarded the Michael DeBakey Research Scholarship by the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) and AATS Foundation. This two-year research scholarship is awarded annually to a single North American surgeon committed to pursuing an academic career in...

Greg J. Haro, MD, a general surgery resident at UCSF, has been named a 2019 STAT Wunderkind by STAT News, a journal that reports the latest in health, medicine, and scientific discoveries. This prestigious award is given to early-career scientists who are performing groundbreaking research. Dr. Haro is currently a...

Cardiac and heart/lung transplant surgeon-scientist Tobias Deuse, M.D. has been awarded a 4-year $400K grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate space-related physiological changes in liver aging and regeneration. The work will be carried out aboard the International Space Station (ISS) using...

Mutations in Mitochondrial DNA Induced by Cell Reprogramming May Trigger Immune Response In 2006, scientists discovered a way to “reprogram” mature cells – adult skin cells, for example – into stem cells that could, in principle, give rise to any tissue or organ in the body. Many assumed it was only a matter of...

UCSF Assistant Professor Bhairavi Tolani, Ph.D., a member of the UCSF Thoracic Oncology Lab, was awarded the Hellman Family - Early Career Faculty Award for 2019-2020. Established by Warren & Chris Hellman and their children in 1994, the purpose of the Hellman Fellows Program is to support the research of...

Tobias Deuse, MD, Professor of Surgery at UCSF, and a cardiac and heart transplant surgeon internationally renowned for his pioneering work in the development of minimally-invasive techniques for mitral valve repair, discusses the advantages of minimally invasive approaches for the treatment of mitral valve...

Four members of the UCSF Department of Surgery were recently honored with Exceptional Physician Awards by UCSF Health. The four were nominated and selected based on their demonstration of UCSF's core PRIDE values -- Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity and Excellence. Their hard work, dedication and...

Despite adoption of molecular biomarkers in the management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the recently adopted 8th Edition staging utilized only clinicopathologic characteristics, and validated improvement in risk stratification of early-stage disease remains elusive. We therefore evaluated the integration...

Gavitt A. Woodard, M.D., a cardiothoracic surgery fellow at UCSF, has been awarded an Intuitive Surgical Robotics Fellowship from the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) Foundation. This opportunity provides advanced robotic training and certification to a select group of fellows each year. Dr...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...