La Martiniere, Calcutta, India, English Language and Literature, I.S.C.,1981
Calcutta Medical College, Calcutta, India, M.D.,1985
Diploma in Child Health (D.C.H.), London, UK, with distinction 1989
Cambridge University, U.K, Ph.D.,1995
Minnie M. Sarwal M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, DCH is professor of Surgery, director of the Sarwal Lab, and Precision Transplant Medicine at UCSF. Sarwal is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the fields of renal and transplant medicine, genomics, proteomics and immunology. She as a deep passion for improving the health of organ transplant recipients by discovering new treatments and investigative approaches for improving outcomes. Prior to joining UCSF, Sarwal was Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics and Immunology at Stanford University, Medical Director of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital and Director of the Sarwal Lab.
Sarwal received her M.D. from Calcutta Medical College in India, completed her residency in the UK, and a fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology at Guy's Hospital, London, UK. She earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from Cambridge University (Christ's College) where she worked with Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner on the synthetic mapping of human and puffer fish G proteins. Sarwal also holds a Diploma in Child Health from London, UK, and membership in the Royal College of Physicians, UK (MRCP). In 2009, she was formally elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, UK in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of medicine.
Sarwal is a member of numerous national and international societies including the ASN, IPTA, AST, TTS, and IPNA. She has served as Associate Editor of American Journal of Transplantation and as a reviewer for Lancet, Nature Medicine, NEJM, Transplantation, Nature Genetics, PNAS, Kidney International and other prestigious peer-reviewed journals. Sarwal has also been the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including the Order of Excellence in Scientific Research (Cambridge, UK, 2002), the Dean's Teaching Award (2005), the Junior Faculty Award from the CCIS (2003-6), a Key Opinion Leader in Organ Transplantation by the Transplantation Society (2007-2009), an elected Senator at Large for the Stanford Faculty Senate (2005-10), the TTS-Roche Award for Outstanding Achievement Transplantation Science (Clinical; 2010), and the Cunio Richardson NKF Award for Scientific Excellence (2012).
As principal Investigator on numerous multicenter clinical trials, both industry and institutional, Sarwal has developed extensive expertise in the design and execution of clinical studies. While at Stanford, Sarwal conducted the first successful U.S. steroid avoidance trial and the first dosing safety trial for Rituximab in pediatric renal transplantation.
In 2009, Sarwal founded, Organ-i, a Stanford University spin-out to develop and commercialize her pioneering work. Organ-i leveraged 15 years of research and over $20M in NIH grants. The company's goal is to improve the clinical management of transplant patients globally by commericializing non-invasive tests to monitor and predict organ health for transplant recipients.
Sarwal is credited with the introduction of (k-SORT), a Kidney Solid Organ Rejection Test, the company's lead product, as well as a pipeline of molecular assays focused on post-transplant rejection monitoring and allograft tolerance. In June 2014. Immucor, Inc., a global leader in transfusion and transplantation diagnostics, announced the acquisition of Organ-i and retained Sarwal as a scientific advisory role to advance the Organ-i pipeline.