News & Events

Michael S. Conte, M.D., Professor and Chief of the Division of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery  and Director of the Conte Lab, has been awarded two grants to develop a prototype medical device that will deliver bioactive lipid mediators to prevent "restenosis", the recurrent narrowing of blood vessels following interventions such as angioplasty, stenting, and bypass surgery. The bioactive compounds are being developed in the Conte Lab.  The first grant, a $200.000 Technology Development Award from the UC Center for Accelerated Innovation, is funded through a combination of grants and [...]

Shant Vartanian, M.D. received an Accelerator Award to develop a Percutaneous Arteriovenous Fistula Device for Dialysis Access at the Surgical Innovations Shark Tank on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at UCSF's Mission Bay campus. This was the 2nd Shark Tank hosted by Surgical Innovations, an internal incubator/accelerator for early-stage medical devices ideas, and the first to be open to faculty in all UCSF schools and departments. The initiative was launched 3 years ago by the Department of Surgery in partnership with the Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences. The applicant pool [...]

The multifaceted rarefied career of Marlene Grenon, M.D., C.M., aspiring astronaut cum UCSF vascular surgeon, was recently profiled in the October 2106 issue of "Vascular Specialist", a publication of the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) with a worldwide audience of vascular surgeons, interventional cardiologists, vascular and interventional radiologists, and other specialists. Dr. Grenon, an Associate Professor in the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, has been on leading edge of research on how the human body, in particular the cardiovascular system, fares under the rigors of [...]

The UCSF Division of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery recently launched a new website for its Center for Limb Preservation & Wound Care. The program, led by vascular surgeon Michael S. Conte, M.D. and podiatric surgeon Alexander M. Reyzelman, D.P.M., is the first of its kind in the Bay Area — pooling the expertise of vascular surgeons, podiatrists, reconstructive microsurgeons, nurse practitioners and other specialists to provide integrated, multidisciplinary care for patients at high risk of foot and leg amputation, particularly diabetic patients. The Center treats patients with foot [...]

The UCSF Heart and Vascular Center recently opened a new ambulatory care clinic located on the 5th Floor of the ACC Building at 400 Parnassus Ave. in San Francisco. The multidisciplinary clinic offers outpatient care and testing, and an array medical procedures. The new clinic houses eleven UCSF cardiovascular programs, including five from the Department of Surgery, under one roof, programs previously spread out over disparate locations: Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery Vascular & Endovascular Surgery Center for Limb Preservation & Wound Care Heart Transplant Program Lung [...]

The career of nurse practitioner Joanna Delong, RN, MS, NP, Clinical Director of the UCSF Heart and Vascular Center, was the subject of a recent profile in the School of Nursing's "Science of Caring". The article "Creating Opportunities for Nurse Practitioners to Help Save Limbs and More" describes her diverse set of nursing experiences, including in the liver transplant intensive care unit (ICU) at University of Pittsburgh, in the cardiac ICU at UCSF Medical Center, and as an informatics expert leading a team that built the nursing documentation for the first electronic medical record (EMR) [...]

The NIH has awarded Robert Raffai, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery and Director of the Atherosclerosis Research Lab, a 4-year R01 grant to study Hyperglycemia and MicroRNA Dysregulation of Inflammation in Atherosclerosis. Dr. Raffai has described the purpose of the research as follows: This project will test our hypothesis that hyperglycemia accelerates atherosclerosis in diabetic mice by dysregulating microRNA processing in immune cells as a consequence of increased cellular oxidative stress. It will also test whether this effect [...]

 The UCSF Vascular & Endovascular Surgery program earned the highest designation in the 2015 Leapfrog Hospital Survey for quality outcomes in California for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair and tied for the lowest predicted mortality score for the procedure in the state.

UCSF News reports on a recent study led by UCSF researchers linking post-traumatic stress to a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and death. The results of the research were reported in the March 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. Marlene Grenon, M.D., C.M. Associate Professor in the Division of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery, was the lead author of the paper and played a pivotal role in the research. The paper is the result of a collaborative effort among cardiology, vascular surgery, and psychiatry at the San Francisco VA Health Care [...]

Rong Wang, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery and Director of the Wang Lab, has been invited to speak at the The American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) 2016 symposium on the topic of "Angiogenesis in Organ Development and Function." The ASIP 2016 Annual Meeting will be held April 2-6, 2016, in conjunction with Experimental Biology 2016 at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA. The Program Committee has assembled a vibrant scientific program encompassing diverse topics relevant to basic biology and the pathobiology of human disease. The theme of the ASIP 2016 Annual Meeting is [...]

In his 33-year career as a conceptual artist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, John Maduell illustrated futuristic technologies few others could imagine. But he never envisioned the toll diabetes and vascular disease would take on his body—or that one day he might lose his legs because of these problems.  Maduell's troubles started two years ago when he developed a diabetic ulcer on his left foot. "Before I knew it, I was in the hospital, with three toes amputated," he says. Still, the wound didn't heal, and Maduell, who now lives and paints in Modesto, was told removing the [...]

UCSF Magazine reports on the work of researchers using potent compounds, produced naturally from fish oil, to block the inflammation that can reblock arteries opened during stent procedures.  Michael S. Conte, M.D. Chief of the Division of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery and Director of the Conte Lab, and other researcher are collaborating in this endeavor:  Doctors implant more than a half million stents annually to prop open patients' blocked arteries and restore their blood flow. But often, inflammation triggers a process that reblocks the vessel as the area heals. UC San Francisco [...]

Millie Hughes-Fulford, Ph.D.and Marlene Grenon, M.D., C.M., both of UCSF, and Apollo astronaut Russell Schweickart, will moderate a panel on interplanetary travel to Mars, the session entitled "Mars or Bust". The panel session will take place at the World Future 2015 conference which runs from July 24 - 26th in San Francisco. According to the hosts: WorldFuture is the annual conference of the World Future Society (WFS). For nearly fifty years, WFS conferences have brought together the smartest futurists and leaders in the world to explore the impact of current and future trends in society, [...]

Rong Wang, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery and Director of the Wang Lab, was invited to give a plenary speech at the 11th HHT International Scientific & Medical Conference in Captiva Island, Florida on June 11-14, 2015. She spoke about Notch4-mediated formation of arteriovenous malformation, discussing how changes in the signaling pathway can cause both the progression and regression of the disease. The 2015 meeting brought together the world's leading HHT experts in both basic research as well as clinical practice and will focus on translating findings between the fields. Basic research is [...]

The NHLBI Vascular Interventions/Innovations and Therapeutic Advances (VITA) Program has awarded Michael S. Conte, M.D., Professor & Chief of the Division of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery, a translational research grant to study the problem of vascular injury and develop prototype medical drugs and devices that effectively prevent restenosis, reduce vascular scarring, and improve vascular surgical outcomes. The grant is a collaboration between the Conte Lab and Tejal Desai, Ph.D., Director of the Therapeutic Microtechnology And Nanotechnology Laboratory and Chair of Bioengineering [...]

UCSF News reports that U.S. only a small number of nursing home residents are alive and ambulatory one year after undergoing lower extremity revascularization procedures with those still alive gaining little, if any, function: Only a few U.S. nursing home residents who undergo lower extremity revascularization procedures are alive and ambulatory a year after surgery, according to UCSF researchers, and most patients still alive gained little, if any, function. The study appears in the April 6 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. "Our findings can inform conversations among physicians, [...]

The pioneering work of Timothy Chuter, M.D., a Professor of Vascular Surgery at UCSF, was recently profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle. The story cited his major accomplishments and important discoveries in the field:  The aortic aneurysms and areas he's worked on are preventing people from dying from ruptured aneurysms," said Dr. Peter Lawrence, president of the Society of Vascular Surgery, which honored Chuter in 2008. "It's not that often that somebody comes along and solves a problem or begins the process of solving a problem that has a huge, dramatic impact on health [...]

Every year, more than a half-million Americans undergo procedures to have a narrowed coronary artery propped open with a small metal mesh tube, or stent. The procedure is common for certain patients who've experienced a heart attack or other arterial blockages, and it helps to restore blood flow. But in about one in four cases (one in three if it's your leg artery), the vasculature tissue starts renarrowing again after the procedure, effectively regrowing the blockage. The problem of excessive vascular scarring isn't limited to stents, but also affects many other common procedures such as [...]

A clinical study led by UCSF Vascular Surgeon Marlene Grenon, M.D., C.M. looked at the effects of physical inactivity on vascular endothelial function and arterial stiffness, two measures that relate to cardiovascular risk. The results showed that a short term exposure to physical inactivity leads to quantifiable impairment in endothelial function, artery wall stiffness and diastolic blood pressure. The group hypothesized that this may be associated with a vascular deconditioning state. These findings have the potential for widespread relevance: in hospitalized and post-operative patients, [...]

Advances in the treatment of complex aortic aneurysms — especially novel endovascular devices and hybrid procedures — make it possible to choose the right procedure for the right patient at the right time to minimize risk and maximize long-term benefit, says Michael Conte, M.D., chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at UCSF Medical Center. "We still perform a significant volume of open repair for complex aneurysms," Conte says. "But we're also one of only two or three centers in the country with deep experience in the use of branched stent grafts." A leading [...]