Clinical Associates

Under the leadership of Marc Shuman, M.D., professor of medicine and urology and co-leader of the Prostate Cancer Program in the Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCSF, the Clinical Associates Program (CAP) is designed to enhance opportunities for QB3 scientists to address significant needs within the medical community. QB3’s Clinical Associates are full-time UCSF faculty who are experts in their field of medicine, as well as clinical and laboratory investigators focused on human disease. Representing the breadth of the exceptional clinical talent at UCSF, CAP members are eager to explore, as either collaborators or consultants, applications of scientific discoveries that will facilitate improvements in diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disease.

CAP faculty provide advice to life science companies seeking pre-clinical and clini­cal guidance in research development, and help identify UCSF scientists with related expertise. CAP faculty also participate in QB3 graduate courses such as Dr. Shuman’s Anti-Medical School, and seminar series such as Cancer Club and Brain Club.

• Homer A. Boushey, M.D., professor of medicine, is chief of the Division of Allergy/Immunology and a principal investigator for UCSF’s NIH-supported Asthma Clinical Research Network Center. He also serves as the director of the Research Review Committee for the Health Effects Institute charged with examining the health effects of fuel emissions. He has long been interested in the mech­anisms underlying asthma, acute bronchitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. He is particularly interested in methods to improve the efficiency and quality of diagnosis, assessment, and treatment, including biomarkers to predict the course of disease, prognosis, or responsiveness to treatment. Dr. Boushey has served on the National Expert Panel for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma, and is a past president of the American Thoracic Society. He is a graduate of UCSF’s School of Medicine and its post-graduate training programs in internal medicine and pulmonary/­critical care medicine.

• Laura J. Esserman, M.D., M.B.A., is professor of surgery and radiology and affiliate faculty at the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies. She is a member of the Program in Biological and Medical Informatics (BMI); director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center; and co-leader of the Breast Oncology Pro­gram, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She started the INSTINCT  (Informatics Supporting Therapy in Individualized Clinical Trials) program to train postdoctoral fellows, join interdis­ciplinary faculty, and provide opportunities for innovation. The program supported the development of the I SPY TRIAL, a collaborative network assessing the impact of interventions and the testing of new agents in women with large breast cancers using novel imaging and molecular triage during neoadjuvant therapy. The program also spurred the creation of the Cancer Genome Browser (an adaptation of the Human Genome Browser built by David Haussler's bioinformatics group at UCSC) to support data integration for the I SPY TRIAL. A graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Esserman received her M.D. and an M.B.A. at Stanford University.

• Don Ganem, M.D., professor of microbiology and immunology and medicine at UCSF, is a virologist and infectious disease specialist who studies viral replication and disease induction. A recognized expert on viral hepatitis, in 1995 he turned his attention to the study of the herpes virus (KSHV) that causes the AIDS-related neoplasm Kaposi’s sarcoma. His lab was the first to cultivate KSHV. After graduating from Harvard College in 1972, Ganem received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and went on to residency and chief residency in internal medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He did subspecialty training in infectious diseases at UCSF, where he worked in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Harold Varmus prior to joining the faculty there. A past president of the American Society for Virology, Dr. Ganem also serves as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Peter Ganz, M.D., is chief of cardiology and director of the Center of Excellence in Vascular Research at the San Francisco General Hospital and the Maurice Eliaser Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ganz has been a pioneer and a leader in translational vascular research. His interests include understanding key elements of human atherosclerosis including vascular endothelial function, the biology of nitric oxide, inflammation and atherosclerotic plaque instability. Dr. Ganz received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, completed his residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and cardiovascular fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He spent 25 years directing research in the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, prior to arriving to UCSF in 2008.

• Andrei Goga, M.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, and a member of the UCSF Cancer Center and Breast Oncology Program. His research focuses on how genetic alterations in cancer cells can sensitize them to sel­ective cell-cycle inhibition. His lab uses quantitative approaches to understand the molecular basis for oncogene cooperativity, the sensitivity of specific oncogenic pathways to cell-cycle inhibitors, and how miRNAs alter tumor phenotypes and response to therapeutics. He is also an attending physician at the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center. His graduate work focused on understanding signaling pathways of the BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase oncogene. During his post-doctoral fellowship at UCSF he studied transgenic models of cancer and cell-cycle regulation. He received his clinical training at UCSF, completing a residency in internal medicine. Dr. Goga received his M.D. and Ph.D. at UCLA.

• Michael Harrison, M.D., Ph.D. is professor emeritus of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, and founding director of the Fetal Treatment Center at UCSF.  He is a graduate of Yale University, and received his M.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School before going on to general surgical residency training at Massachussetts General Hospital and a pediatric surgery fellowship at both the Rikshospitalet in Oslo, Norway and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Acknowledged around the world as the “father of fetal surgery,” Dr. Harrison is internationally renown for his expertise and innovation in pediatric and fetal surgery. He is author of more than 400 hundred peer-reviewed articles and several textbooks including three editions of “The Unborn Patient: The Art and Science of Fetal Therapy”. As a member of various medical and surgical professional societies, he has been recognized by colleagues for his contributions to the field and honored with a number of prestigious awards, most recently the American College of Surgeons Jacobson Innovation Award.  Dr. Harrison maintains board certification in pediatric surgery.

• S. Claiborne Johnston, M.D., Ph.D. is director of the Stroke Service at UCSF, where he is professor of neurology and epidemiology. He is also director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCSF. He received his undergraduate education at Amherst College and completed medical school at Harvard University.  He received a PhD in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.  Dr. Johnston has published extensively in the prevention and treatment of stroke and transient ischemic attack.  He is perhaps best known for his studies describing the short-term risk of stroke in patients with transient ischemic attack and identifying patients at greatest risk, and also for his work related to measuring the impact of research. He has led several large cohort studies of cerebrovascular disease and two multicenter randomized trials. Dr. Johnston is the executive vice-editor of the Annals of Neurology and has served on the editorial boards of several other journals.  He has been honored previously with the American Academy of Neurology’s Pessin Prize for Stroke Leadership, the American Stroke Association’s Siekert New Investigator Award, and the Feinberg Award for Clinical Stroke Excellence.

• Geoffrey T. Manley, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurosurgery, is chief of neurosurgery at San Francisco General Hospital, and a faculty member of the Center for Clinical and Translational Infor­matics at UCSF. An internationally recognized expert in neuro­trauma and neurocritical care, Dr. Manley has helped to define new molecular mechan­isms of injury to the nervous system that may lead to new treat­ments. He is also a leader in the rapidly growing field of advanced neuromonitoring and clinical informatics for critical care. His many honors include the General Motors Trauma Research Award and the Trauma Research Award from the American College of Surgeons. He has served as a consultant for the Prehospital Guidelines Committee for the World Health Organization and on a number of committees for the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Manley is a graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Cornell University Medical College, where he earned his medical degree as well as his doctorate degree in neuroscience. He completed his residency in neurosurgery at UCSF and a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biophysics.

• Mervyn Maze, MB, ChB, was born in Cape Town, Republic of South Africa, where he obtained his degree in Medicine (MB, ChB with Honors) in 1970. He trained in internal medicine, initially at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, and then at the Royal Free Hospital in London. In 1976, he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, followed by training in anesthesiology, pain management and critical care medicine. He joined the faculty at Stanford in 1981 and led a laboratory to investigate the mechanisms of anesthetic and analgesic action. In 1999, he was recruited back to the UK, where he rose to be head of the division of surgery, oncology, reproductive biology and anesthesia at Imperial College in London. He also held the positions of Sir Ivan Magill Chair of Anesthesia, campus dean, and director of research at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. He became the first chair for the specialty of anaesthesia within the National Institute of Health Research. In 2009, he was recruited to become chair of anesthesiology and perioperative care at UCSF.

• Mark Moasser, M.D., associate professor of medicine, received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed medical school at Tufts University School of Medicine. He pursued a residency in internal medicine at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City and then won a fellowship in medical oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. At Sloan-Kettering he served as an instructor and a clinical assistant before taking a position at UCSF in 1999. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. His honors include the California Breast Cancer Research Program Award, the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Research Foundation Award, and an American Cancer Society Research Scholarship.

• Jeffrey Olgin, M.D., is chief of cardiology at UCSF. He specializes in ablation and device therapies for arrhythmias. He started the Atrial Arrhyth­mia Clinic at UCSF Medical Center, which provides comprehensive care, including new ablation, device and drug therapy, as well as programs to investigate genetic links in atrial fibrillation. The main focus of his research is to identify unique TGFß pathways in the atria that promote atrial fibrosis, and to study how atrial fibrosis promotes atrial fibrillation. He received an undergraduate degree as well as a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a residency, cardiology fellowship and cardiac electrophysiology fellow­ship at UCSF. He then went to Krannert Institute of Cardiology at Indiana University School of Medicine, where he developed an active program in ablation of atrial fibrillation. In 2003, Olgin returned to UCSF to be chief of cardiac electrophysiology.

• Eric J. Small, M.D., holds joint professor appointments in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Urology at UCSF. Dr. Small also serves as chief of the division of hematology and oncology in the Department of Medicine, and as director of investigational therapeutics at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he is also program leader for the Prostate Cancer Program. In addition to co-directing the Clinical Urologic Oncology Program, he directs the Urologic Oncology Research Office. Dr. Small is chair of the Genitourinary Committee of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B , a National Cancer Institute Cooperative Oncology Group. His research interest is immunotherapeutics for prostate cancer, and new agents to treat advanced prostate cancer. Dr. Small received a B.S. from Stanford University and attended Case Western University School of Medicine in Cleveland. He undertook his post-graduate residency training in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital at Harvard University, and completed a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the Cancer Research Institute at UCSF.

• Wade S. Smith, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurology, serves as the director of the UCSF Neurovascular Service, specializing in the management of acute stroke; neurocritical care; cerebral blood-flow monitoring, and neuroimaging of acute stroke using CT techniques. As a neurointensivist trained in both critical care and neurology, he directs the UCSF Neurological Intensive Care Unit, a 29-bed NeuroICU dedicated to the care and resuscitation of patients with neurological injury. Smith earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the University of Washington. He completed a residency as well as a fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.