News & Events

ABC News reports on the improved chance of having successful organ transplants in patients undergoing bariatric surgery: Gone may be the days of limiting bariatric surgery just to helping patients lose weight. Indeed, these weight loss surgeries, in all forms, do just as the name describes. But a slew of new...

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...

John P. Roberts, M.D., Professor and Chief of Transplant Surgery and the Organ Transplant Service at UCSF, has been elected President of the National Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing ( OPTN/UNOS) Board of Directors. Roberts will serve a one-year term beginning in late...

Dr. John Roberts, UCSF professor and chief of transplant surgery, has been elected vice president/president-elect of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing (OPTN/UNOS) Board of Directors. Roberts will serve a one-year term beginning in June 2011 and will become the...

San Francisco International Film Festival, Thirteen years ago, Pat Spurgeon of the indie pop band Rogue Wave received a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, just as the band started to take off, the kidney began to fail. The feature documentary "D Tour" chronicles Pat's experience as a UCSF kidney patient including...

Nancy Ascher, MD, PhD on NPR's Forum with Michael Krasny Each day in the U.S., 19 people die waiting for donated organs. To help increase supply, some health experts and economists want to legalize the market for human organs. We take up the issue with a panel of experts.

"International Stem Cell Corporation announced today that its human parthenogenetic stem cell lines will be used in studies aimed at creating liver cells to treat human liver disease. ...... Holger Willenbring, MD, UCSF assistant professor of surgery, will direct the research. "The fact that Dr. Willenbring and...

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.

UCSF News reports on the the difficult choices that patients, families and doctors face because of the shortage of donated organs for transplantation. A difficult conundrum for the nation's transplant patients was aired September 22 when the news program California Connected featured UCSF's Liver Transplant...

"Of all the things for a married couple to bicker about, Nancy Ascher and John Roberts have hit on a first -- a pulsing human liver. To be precise, they are standing forehead to forehead with a man splayed out between them. Roberts wants more of his liver to take next door to a waiting recipient. Ascher wants more...

"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...

"The next day, surgeons at the University of California at San Francisco performed a rare liver transplant called a ``domino transplant,'' the first in the Bay Area and one of just a handful done in the United States. ........................Her choice was to have a liver that will give her a disease in 30 years...