Transplant & Stellar Research

The Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC is a world leader in clinical renal transplantation and research, committed to achieving both successful transplant outcomes and investigating innovative methods to mitigate end stage renal disease.

Housed at Vancouver General Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital and BC Children’s Hospital, the team provides the surgical service to renal donors and recipients throughout the province, having performed every renal transplant in British Columbia for the past 35 years. With a success rate of 98% for living related renal transplantation, the program is highly regarded for its exceptional outcomes record.

With hundreds of patients awaiting a transplant, the transplant program has brought about innovative strategies to increase donation rates including: facilitating anonymous altruistic donation, paired-donor exchange, and donation after cardiac death programs.  By forging strong alliances with hospitals and Intensive Care Units across BC, the team continues to nurture deceased donor strategies with a clear objective of increasing the donor pool.

Clinical and scientific research is a key component of the department’s work. Studies are currently underway to better understand attitudes towards donation and outcomes of living donation, while scientific research is focusing on organ preservation, perfusate technology, and genomic analysis of transplantation.


Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS)

With expertise in the area of Minimally Invasive Surgery, several members of the DUS endeavour to develop and perfect procedures of increasing complexity.

Instrumental in bringing the state-of-the-art surgical robot, daVinci to Vancouver, the members of DUS faculty remain the primary group utilizing this technology in daily operations, to undertake robotic assisted radical prostatectomy, pyeloplasty, cystectomy and partial nephrectomy for the Urologic patients in BC.

The MIS team collaborates with several other UBC departments to research new procedures and protocols, and investigate advanced medical imaging, simulation, augmented reality, micromachining, and robotic engineering.

 

Stellar Research

The Surgical Technologies Experimental Laboratory and Advanced Robotics (STELLAR) facility provides an incubator for innovation in applied engineering research as it relates to surgery. The result is a vibrant image guided and robotics oriented research program that is truly one of a kind.

Securing a highly sought after research partnership with Intuitive Surgical (Sunnyvale, CA) the facility endeavours to develop devices and services to compliment the daVinci surgical system, as well as surgical adjuncts for navigation and guidance available to all advanced surgical platforms.

Founded by Drs. Martin McLoughlin and Dr. Christopher Nguan, the STELLAR initiative consists of collaborators in the UBC Faculty of Applied Sciences: Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, and a collaborator in the Faculty of Science- the Department of Computer Science. Primary collaborators include the researchers in the UBC Robotics and Control Laboratory, led by Professors Tim Salcudean and Robert Rohling and.  Associated investigators include Professor Purang Abolmaesumi.