James M. Gardner, MD, PhD Awarded Appointment to Prestigious Physician-Scientist Scholar Program
James M. Gardner, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Transplant Surgery, has been awarded an appointment to the prestigious Physician-Scientist Scholar Program (PSSP), part of the UCSF Sandler Fellows Program. All of the Departments in the University are invited to nominate candidates who compete for the award, only one of which is given per year. Dr. Gardner was nominated by Chris E. Freise, M.D. and Julie Ann Sosa, MD, MA, FACS, and is the first surgeon to receive this award.
The appointment provides $1.25M in direct research funding over five years. The Physician-Scientist Scholar Program (PSSP) attracts the most accomplished and promising young physician/scientists to UCSF and accelerates their transition to independent laboratory-based investigators working on research problems relevant to human health.
Dr. Gardner completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University, and his MD/PhD degrees and General Surgery residency at UCSF. He will complete the UCSF Abdominal Transplant Surgery fellowship in July and begin his appointment as an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Division of Transplant Surgery in August as well as starting his research lab as a member of the UCSF Diabetes Center.
Dr. Gardner's work, conducted in collaboration with the Mark Anderson Lab at the UCSF Diabetes Center, is focused on the mechanisms regulating self-tolerance in the adaptive immune system, and translating these findings into relevant therapeutics for inducing and maintaining donor-specific tolerance.
Dr. Gardner and Dr. Anderson discovered a novel population of cells distributed throughout the body’s secondary lymphoid organs, called extrathymic-Aire expressing cells (eTACs), which are capable of inducing robust self-tolerance and preventing autoimmunity (Gardner et al. Science 2008, Immunity 2013). Their work on this population is also supported by an NIH/NIHAI R01 - (Developing eTACs as a Novel Method of Tolerance in Type 1 Diabetes), an American Diabetes Association Young Investigator Award, and an American Society of Transplant Surgeons Fellowship in Transplantation Grant.