Varvara A. Kirchner

Varvara A. Kirchner, MD, FACS, Associate Professor of Surgery (Abdominal Transplantation), Stanford University

Research Description: Dr. Varvara A. Kirchner is Associate Professor of Surgery at the Division of Transplantation, Stanford University. She completed her medical school, surgical residency and multi-organ transplant fellowship in adult and pediatric liver, pancreas, kidney transplantation and total pancreatectomy with islet auto-transplantation at the University of Minnesota. She underwent further training in living donor liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery at the Asan Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea. Her clinical practice involves living and deceased donor liver and kidney transplantation in adult and pediatric patients as well as total pancreatectomy with islet auto-transplantation for patients with chronic and acute recurrent pancreatitis. She currently serves as Surgical Director of the Islet Cell Auto-Transplant at Stanford Children’s and Associate Director of the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program at the Division of Abdominal Transplantation. Dr. Kirchner’s research focuses on the biology of aging, cellular and solid organ transplantation. Her specific interest is in auto-islet and iPSC-derived hepatocyte therapies. Her research on the impact of donor age on generation of iPSC-derived cellular products is supported by the NIA K08 Faculty Development Award. She is an active member of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the International Liver Transplantation Society where she serves as a Past-Chair of the Vanguard Committee and the Co-Coordinator of the Special Interest Group on Infectious Diseases and Liver Transplantation.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Camunas-Soler J, Dai XQ, Hang Y, Bautista A, Lyon J, Suzuki K, Kim SK, Quake SR, MacDonald PE. Patch-Seq Links Single-Cell Transcriptomes to Human Islet Dysfunction in Diabetes. Cell Metab. 2020 May 5;31(5):1017-1031.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.04.005. PMID: 32302527; PMCID: PMC7398125. [cites P30DK116074] 

  2. Enge Kim S, Whitener RL, Peiris H, Gu X, Chang CA, Lam JY, Camunas-Soler J, Park I, Bevacqua RJ, Tellez K, Quake SR, Lakey JRT, Bottino R, Ross PJ, Kim SK. Molecular and genetic regulation of pig pancreatic islet cell development. Development. 2020 Mar 30;147(6):dev186213. doi: 10.1242/dev.186213. PMID: 32108026; PMCID: PMC7132804. [cites P30DK116074] 

  3. Guler GD, Ning Y, Ku CJ, Phillips T, McCarthy E, Ellison CK, Bergamaschi A, Collin F, Lloyd P, Scott A, Antoine M, Wang W, Chau K, Ashworth A, Quake SR, Levy S. Detection of early stage pancreatic cancer using 5-hydroxymethylcytosine signatures in circulating cell free DNA. Nat Commun. 2020 Oct 19;11(1):5270. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18965-w. PMID: 33077732; PMCID: PMC7572413. 

  4. Wang W, Penland L, Gokce O, Croote D, Quake SR. High fidelity hypothermic preservation of primary tissues in organ transplant preservative for single cell transcriptome analysis. BMC Genomics. 2018 Feb 13;19(1):140. doi: 10.1186/s12864-018-4512-5. PMID: 29439658; PMCID: PMC5811979.