Doctors Tippi MacKenzie and Mary Norton of the UCSF Departments of Surgery and Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Reproductive Sciences proudly announce the formation of a trans-disciplinary program designed to improve our understanding and treatment of patients with congenital anomalies and pregnancy complications.

You may have seen his smiling face on billboards, or on BART trains or Muni buses. The guy is Dr. Larry Rand, the director of Perinatal Services at UCSF’s Fetal Treatment Center, as well as the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Maternal and Fetal Medicine. A renowned researcher in the prevention of pre-term infant mortality, he is the co-director of a new $100 million research project funded by the Benioffs and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce the incidence of premature births around the world, particularly among low-income, underserved populations.

Publication by Anita J. Moon-Grady, MD of the Fetal Cardiovascular Program on the diagnosis of TAPVR fetal echocardiography. The diagnosis of TAPVR using can be suspected on standard axial views included in second-trimester obstetric screening examinations of the fetal heart and confirmed on fetal echocardiography with the use of pulsed wave Doppler imaging.

MacKenzie and her UCSF colleagues have shown that, in mice at least, pregnancy complications after fetal surgery are triggered by activation of the mother’s T cells – the same T cells that cause the body to reject a donor organ after transplant surgery. “We have the ability to design specific medical treatments to prevent it – for example, by using medications that target some of the pathways involved in T cell-mediated rejection."