Stéphan Busque

Stéphan Busque, MD, MSc, Professor, Department of Surgery, Division of Abdominal Transplantation; Director, Adult Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program, Stanford University School of Medicine and Stanford Hospitals & Clinics 

Research Description: Dr. Busque’s research is focused on the improvement of clinical immunosuppression after organ transplantation and ultimately the pursuit of tolerance. He has contributed to the clinical translation of a tolerance induction protocol after kidney transplantation developed by Dr. Samuel Strober, another SDRC investigator. Together, they demonstrated that stable mixed chimerism could be achieved in kidney transplant recipients receiving from the matched donor hematopoietic stem cells. Subsequently 17 of 22 HLA matched recipients have been weaned off completely of immunosuppressive drugs. The conditioning regimen of total lymphoid irradiation (TLI) and anti-thymocyte globulin proved to be of low toxicity as demonstrated in the animal model. His efforts are now directed at expanding this approach to less well-matched donor/recipient pairs. In addition, Dr. Busque is an active participant in the California Transplant Donor Network, and procured cadaveric adult vertebral bodies and human pancreata for research by colleagues in SDRC. Dr. Busque has also participated in the evaluation, trial design and data analysis of promising new immunosuppressive drugs for organ transplantation, voclosporin and tofacitinib. With other SDRC members, he helped found the Stanford Pancreatic Islet Replacement and Immune Tolerance (SPIRIT) program, and serves as its clinical director.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Busque S, Scandling JD, Lowsky R, Shizuru J, Jensen K, Waters J, Wu HH, Sheehan K, Shori A, Choi O, Pham T, Fernandez Vina MA, Hoppe R, Tamaresis J, Lavori P, Engleman EG, Meyer E, Strober S. Mixed chimerism and acceptance of kidney transplants after immunosuppressive drug withdrawal. Sci Transl Med. 2020 Jan 29;12(528):eaax8863. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aax8863. PMID: 31996467. 

  2. Cheng XS, Busque S, Lee J, Discipulo K, Hartley C, Tulu Z, Scandling JD, Tan JC. A new approach to kidney wait-list management in the kidney allocation system era: Pilot implementation and evaluation. Clin Transplant. 2018 Nov;32(11):e13406. doi: 10.1111/ctr.13406. PMID: 30218580. 

  3. Scandling JD, Busque S, Lowsky R, Shizuru J, Shori A, Engleman E, Jensen K, Strober S. Macrochimerism and clinical transplant tolerance. Hum Immunol. 2018 May;79(5):266-271. doi: 10.1016/j.humimm.2018.01.002. PMID: 29330112; PMCID: PMC5924711.