News & Events

Minnie Sarwal, MD, PhD and Swas Sur Awarded 2023 Kunal Patel Catalyst Award for Novel Renoprotective Drug Target Discovery in an Established Renal Tubular Injury Model Minnie Sarwal, MD, PhD and Swas Sur Awarded 2023 Kunal Patel Catalyst Award Catalyst Awards are the centerpiece of the Catalyst Program. UCSF principal investigators with promising early-stage research projects designed for patient benefit and with commercial potential spanning therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, and biotools can apply. Awarded projects receive mentorship and advice from the [...]

Committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion UCSF and the Department and Surgery are committed to building a broadly diverse community, nurturing a culture that is welcoming and supportive, and engaging diverse ideas for the provision of culturally competent education, discovery, and patient care. Chancellor Awards for Diversity Chancellor Awards for Diversity recognize the outstanding efforts of individuals who demonstrate a strong dedication to diversity. Individuals recognized are leaders and pioneers in their respective fields and to the communities in which they serve. We are proud [...]

Noninvasive Test More Than 95 Percent Accurate, UCSF Researchers Say A simple urine test can diagnose and predict acute rejection in kidney transplants, leading to an opportunity for earlier detection and treatment, according to a new study by researchers at UC San Francisco.  A test of 601 urine samples showed greater than 95 percent accuracy in determining the risk of rejection following transplant, the researchers said. Their work already has led to the spinoff Bay Area company NephroSant, which plans to launch its first noninvasive test for detecting kidney rejection in the near [...]

Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced $68 million in funding to support the Human Cell Atlas and its selection of 38 collaborative science teams to launch CZI's Seed Networks for a Human Cell Atlas projects. These collaborative groups bring together scientists, computational biologists, software engineers, and physicians to support the continued development of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), an international effort to map all cells in the human body. Minnie M. Sarwal M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, DCH, Director of the Sarwal Lab, and professor and director of Precision Transplant Medicine in [...]

UCSF Researchers Recommend Creation of National Donor Registry While organ transplant recipients receive continual care as the end-stage treatment to their condition, attention also should be given to living donors, who can suffer from hypertension, diabetes and other disorders after donation, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco.  As reported online April 12, 2019, in JAMA Network Open, by aggregating data from publicly available clinical studies, the researchers found that nearly one in seven kidney donors experienced a potentially adverse event that may be related to [...]

Arya Zarinsefat, M.D., a UCSF general surgery resident and research fellow in the Sarwal Lab, has been awarded a prestigious UCSF-Gladstone Center For AIDS Research (CFAR) Mentored Scientist Award.  Dr. Zarinsefat's research will focus on better understanding the genes and process of rejection in kidney transplantation of HIV-infected recipients. The study will apply an innovative method of discovering rejection in HIV-infected kidney transplants by performing DNA cytosine methylation sequencing of plasma samples of individuals with rejection. Methyl-Seq is a novel next-generation [...]

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 NIH has awarded the UCSF Department of Surgery a T32 training grant, "Filling a Void of Research Training for Transplant Surgeons" (FAVOR). The grant, awarded in August 2016, provides annual funding in the amount of $156,602 for in-depth training of three general surgery residents with an interest in transplant surgery during their two research years, the training to be focused on translational immunology. The program is led by Professors Peter G. Stock, M.D., Ph.D. and Minnie M. Sarwal M.D., Ph.D., the principal investigators on the grant. A diverse and distinguished faculty will [...]

Natera, a genetic testing and diagnostics company with proprietary bioinformatics and molecular technology, has announced that it has formed a collaboration with the Sarwal Lab at University of California San Francisco to study DNA markers of kidney transplant rejection.The Sarwal Lab has been focused on using precision medicine techniques to better diagnose and predict acute rejection (AR) in kidney transplants, a finding that eventually could replace the need for biopsies and lead to earlier detection of AR and treatment. Principal investigators in the lab include Lab Director Minnie [...]

Nikolaos Skartsis M.D., Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the UCSF Sarwal Lab, was the recipient of a 2016 Research Fellowship Award from the International Society for Heart & Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) for his project, "The protective role of SPI6 in adoptively transferred regulatory T cells in transplantation". His group will be investigating the protective role of SPI6 in adoptively transferred T regs used to promote transplantation tolerance. Dissecting the homeostatic mechanisms of regulatory T cells may address key issues related to transplantation tolerance induction through T reg [...]

Joshua Y. Yang, B.S., Michael C. Nasr, B.S., and Tyler Schmeckpeper B.S., Master of Translational Medicine (MTM), graduate student researchers in the Sarwal Lab, were recently invited to attend the 9th annual Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2016 at UC Berkeley on April 1-3, 2016, and selected as presenters to disucss their work. The MTM program, a cross-campus collaboration between two University of California campuses—San Francisco and Berkeley, and launched with the help of CTSI, is among the first educational programs of its kind aimed at accelerating the translation of [...]

UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital have launched a new publication, "Transplant News", providing "a more comprehensive approach to communicating the latest breakthroughs available to the patients and families we serve" in the words of John P. Roberts, M.D., Professor and Chief of the UCSF Division of Transplant Surgery and the Transplant Service at UCSF Medical Center.  The inaugural issue includes the following stories: A Passion for Quality: An Interview with Transplant Surgeon Ryutaro Hirose UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco Opens at Mission [...]

Minnie M. Sarwal M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, DCH will speak at the 10th annual PMWC Conference in San Francisco that runs from January 24 - 27, 2016. Her talk will be on the use of molecular diagnostics in organ transplantation to better detect rejection, and improving the management of transplant patients  through proactively to preserve organ function. Dr. Sarwal has over 30 years of clinical experience and 25 years of research experience in translational immunogenetics, genomics, proteomics and informatics. She holds a PhD in Molecular Genetics from Cambridge University, under the mentorship of [...]

Members of the UCSF Transplant Surgery Program participated in National Donate Life Blue & Green Day, wearing the the commemorative blue and green colors, and showing their solidarity with the cause. During this day,the public is encouraged to wear blue and green, hold events and fundraisers, and partner with local restaurants, malls, media, and community organizations in an effort to promote the success of organ, eye and tissue transplantation and the need for registered donors.According to Donate Life America,  nearly 124,000 men, women and children are awaiting organ transplants in the [...]

International Innovation, an online forum for the communication and dissemination of cutting-edge research, recently reported on the pioneering efforts of the Sarwal Lab to develop novel translational approaches for improving the management of kidney transplant patients and treating renal disease. The article reports on the lab's breakthrough assays, the kidney solid organ rejection test (kSORT) and the kidney spontaneous operational tolerance test (kSPOT), and their potential to revolutionize the way kidney transplant patients are managed after transplantation by predicting acute [...]

Nature Reviews Nephrology recently reported on the Sarwal Lab's research elucidating the role of AECAs in graft rejection: Evidence from clinical studies has implicated non-HLA anti-endothelial cell antibodies (AECAs) in transplant rejection. However, the pathogenic mechanisms by whch these antibodies might contribute to renal allograft dysfunction are not well understood. Now, new data from Annette Jackson, Minnie Sarwal (pictured right) and colleagues suggest that AECAs activate the vascular endothelium, resulting in inflammation and microvascular injury", as reported in Research [...]

UCSF News reports on research led by Minnie Sarwal, MD, PhD, Director of the Sarwal Lab, in developing a  test for diagnosing and predicting acute rejection (AR) in kidney transplants, a finding that eventually could replace the need for biopsies and lead to earlier detection of AR and treatment. 'We have found a set of genes in blood that pick up inflammation and acute rejection in different solid organ transplants and thus can replace the need for an invasive biopsy in the future,' said senior author Minnie Sarwal, MD, PhD, Professor of Transplant Surgery at UCSF. 'This assay also [...]

UCSF News recently reported on research of the Sarwal Lab demonstrating pre-transplant antibody levels were associated with recurrence of FSGS.  Researchers at UC San Francisco and Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, may have found a predictor for a disorder affecting kidney transplant recipients that can accelerate organ failure, a discovery that eventually could allow for customized therapies and improved patient selection for transplant. The study of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a devastating form of kidney disease, is in the Oct. 1 issue of Science Translational [...]

Minnie M. Sarwal M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, DCH has been elected as a member of the Council of The Transplantation Society. The Transplantation Society is an organization that serves as an international forum professionals working in the field of organ transplantation. Currently it has 6500+ members spanning across 101 countries across the globe. 

Dr. Minnie Sarwal discusses the omics approach to transplant monitoring and the potential use of sensitive and effective biomarkers for diagnosiing and treating disease. Rapid progress in high throughput molecular screening and in bioinformatics tools have provided the scientific community with new tools for conducting basic and clinical research.