News & Events: Andrew M. Posselt, M.D., Ph.D.

Andrew Posselt, MD, PhD is a transplant and bariatric surgeon and professor of surgery at UCSF.  Dr. Posselt performs kidney, liver, pancreas and islet transplants. He is also among a handful surgeons in the country who also performs bariatric surgery for patients who would otherwise be transplant candidates, but for their BMI and weight.  Dr. Posselt is also director the pancreatic islet transplantation program and as a surgeon-scientist conducts breakthrough research in islet transplantation, tolerance or rejection of transplanted tissue, and the metabolic and biochemical changes seen in [...]

UCSF News, reporting on the 14th World Congress of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA), highlighed improving results in  islet cell transplantation: For the worst cases of type 1 diabetes, islet transplantation already has freed hundreds of people from complete dependence on insulin and from life-threatening consequences of the disease. "However, the procedure still is regarded as experimental by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Islets are clusters of insulin-making cells in the pancreas that are destroyed in people with type 1 diabetes. After [...]

Alison Wesley received her diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes when she was just 11 years old, after she developed the classic symptoms of the disease – severe weight loss, excessive thirst, sugar cravings, frequent urination, and feeling lethargic. To treat the diabetes, doctors put her on the first generation of insulin pumps. She continued to use the pumps off and on until she was in her early 30s. But eventually, even the pumps could no longer help her control her glucose. "I developed 'brittle diabetes'," she explains. "My glucose levels were swinging up and down. I was checking them five to [...]