There is a tremendous opportunity for you to make a significant difference today by supporting the Transplant Service at UCSF. In keeping in line with the Program's mission:
To provide outstanding quality clinical care that is cost effective, yet compassionate. To make significant advances in scientific knowledge and clinical practice through both basic and clinical research.
Excellence in Transplantation Medicine
UCSF is a world leader in the field of organ transplantations with an outstanding team of faculty and staff that are dedicated to providing the best clinical care and advancing science through research and education. The field of transplantation has evolved with astonishing speed: the first transplant in the world was performed in 1954, and as recently as the early 1980s, the one-year survival rate for liver transplant recipients was only 20%. Today, that survival rate has risen to 90%. UCSF's transplant survival rates are comparable or superior to the average in every area, even though UCSF treats some of the most seriously ill patients.
Pioneering Research
UCSF's world-renowned physicians engage in novel research that not only helps transplant patients, but also improves health outcomes for all patients. These discoveries have helped reduce the number of transplants that become necessary, and also have shed new light on the biology of diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV.
Quality Care and Innovative Treatments
With advances in surgical techniques and improved drug regimens to prevent organ rejection and infection, organ transplantation for adults and children is widely recognized as the best treatment for a variety of diseases. Children who years ago had no hope for survival when their organs failed, are now growing up to be healthy adults with transplanted organs and tissue. Some of UCSF's transplant innovations include:
- Living donor program, in which healthy donors can donate one kidney or part of their liver to a transplant patient.
- Paired donor exchange, in which UCSF matches a donor and recipient pair with incompatible blood types with another donor-recipient pair, enabling two recipients to receive organs with perfectly matched blood types.
- HIV and transplantation: UCSF has pioneered the successful kidney, liver, pancreas and islet transplantation of HIV+ patients
- Islet transplantation, in which patients receive the insulin-producing cells from a donor's pancreas, virtually curing them from diabetes
Ways to Contribute
- Major gifts- both outright and endowed, provide our faculty with the funds needed to pursue their important investigations, purchase equipment, or establish a lecture fund- to name a few. Amid drastic cutbacks in funding from the NIH, personal philanthropy is more important now than ever before. Many donors choose to establish both current and endowed funds that will benefit an area of personal or intellectual interest. Outright support allows our faculty members the flexibility to support projects that need funding immediately, while endowed funds create an enduring, highly visible link between the donor or honoree for whom the endowment is named and further, provide our donors the opportunity to share in the pleasures of the program's successes in perpetuity. Private philanthropy is essential- it is the catalyst for success as our physicians tirelessly investigate new, more effective treatments for our patients.
- Endowments such as Distinguished Professorship and Chairs will allow the Department to grow and enrich the program in many ways. These gifts help to facilitate our faculty members to enhance existing programs and to create fellowships and lectureships. They also support promising new programs that might otherwise go unfunded. Additionally, endowed funds are powerful recruiting tools for attracting and retaining the most talented and sought after health scientists and teachers. With such first-rate faculty come the brightest graduate students, the most accomplished colleagues and the public and private support that contribute to an intellectually challenging environment. Naming opportunities are often available with endowments.
- Other gifts include unrestricted funds to support priorities such as faculty initiatives, research efforts and capital projects, just to name a few.
Contact Us
We thank you in advance for your interest. Please contact Anders Yang, our Director of Development. In her role with UCSF's Transplant Service, Anders works with our friends to encourage philanthropic support for our programs. Historically, private philanthropy has played a significant role in the advancement of teaching, education and research. The trend and need continues today, especially amid cutbacks in NIH funding for research. With the support of those whose lives have been touched by our faculty and staff, the Transplant Service will continue to make significant contributions in the future.
If you would like to support the Transplant Service at UCSF, or know of someone that would, please contact Anders Yang via email [email protected] or phone (415) 502-8309.