News & Events: NIH Funding

The UCSF Department of Surgery now ranks No. 3 nationally in NIH research funding among all academic surgery programs, a stunning rise from 6th the last time the survey was done. Three Department of Surgery faculty also ranked in the top 20 of all NIH-funded principal investigators nationally in the category of surgery. The highly respected Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research utilized data from the Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT) to survey U.S. medical schools for their NIH funding levels between October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017. UCSF was the top public recipient [...]

Jason H. Pomerantz, M.D., associate professor of surgery and surgical director of the UCSF Craniofacial Center, has been awarded a 5-year $1.7M R01 grant from National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) to study muscle stem cells, a subpopulation of muscle progenitors that are focal points of vulnerability in muscle dysfunction from disease, trauma or aging. Project Narrative "Muscle dysfunction from disease, trauma or aging, a major health care burden not adequately alleviated by available therapies, could be greatly reduced by treatments that directly [...]

Transplant surgeons Sandy Feng, M.D., Ph.D. and Peter G. Stock, M.D., Ph.D. continued their stellar records of accomplishment in garnering NIH funding for their cutting-edge clinical research, ranking in the top 20 of all NIH-Funded principal investigators in the category of surgery nationally for 2017. Stock ranked 8th and Feng 20th out of 534 investigators nationwide, both in the top 4%, this according to survey data analyzed by the highly respected Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. Blue Ridge utilized data from the Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT) to survey U.S. [...]

An article commentary recently published in NPJ Breast Cancer, a Nature Research journal, discusses the WISDOM Study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM), a groundbreaking clinical trial recruiting 100,000 women from throughout California that will compare annual breast cancer screening with personalized risk-based breast cancer screening. The study is led by Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA (pictured), professor of surgery and director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She and the other Wisdom Study [...]

UCLA, UCSF and City of Hope have received a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study how a common virus called cytomegalovirus may provoke the immune system to reject transplanted kidneys. Minnie M. Sarwal M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, DCH, professor and director of Precision Transplant Medicine in the UCSF Department of Surgery, is co-leader and principal investigator on the grant, which will investigate how a common virus called cytomegalovirus (CMV) may provoke the immune system to reject transplanted kidneys. Sarwal is an internationally [...]

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), one of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded bioengineering professor Shuvo Roy, PhD, a three-year, $2.4 million grant to develop a bioartificial pancreas for treatment of Type 1 Diabetes. The project is a collaboration between the Department of Surgery, Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences, and Diabetes Center at UCSF. Co-investigators include: Tejal Desai, PhD - Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences Matthias Hebrok, PhD - Diabetes Center at UCSF Andrew Posselt, MD, [...]

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Children Health & Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded pediatric surgeons Benjamin Padilla, MD, and Michael Harrison, MD, a two-year grant to study the use of cryoanalgesia as a novel method of pain control in the Nuss Procedure. The research team includes Sunghoon Kim, MD, and Jill Imamura-Ching, RN. Claire Graves, MD, played a key role in setting up the project and developing the grant application while she was a resident in the Innovation Pathway from 2015 to 2017. The Nuss Procedure is a [...]