Danny Calabrese,
MD
Danny Calabrese, MD, is a physician-scientist, pulmonologist, and transplant immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF and a staff physician at the San Francisco VA Health Care System.
Danny came to science through a broad lens. He studied anthropology and biology at Washington University in St. Louis before earning his MD at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine at the University of Washington, then completed fellowships in pulmonary and critical care medicine and in advanced lung disease and transplantation at UCSF, where he joined the faculty in 2018.
His laboratory studies the immune mechanisms of acute and chronic lung injury, with a focus on lung transplantation and natural killer (NK) cells. Using mouse models of human lung disease alongside patient samples and multicenter cohorts, his group works to understand primary graft dysfunction, antibody-mediated rejection, cytomegalovirus, and chronic lung allograft dysfunction. The goal is to turn these insights into therapies that help transplanted lungs last longer. His work is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the VA Office of Research and Development, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the American Lung Association, and includes active clinical trials.
Clinically, Danny attends in the intensive care unit, on the pulmonary consult service, and in the outpatient pulmonary clinic at the San Francisco VA. He also cares for patients with advanced lung disease before and after transplantation on the UCSF Advanced Lung Disease Service. He is a Fellow of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, has chaired its Research and Immunology Professional Community, and received the American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician-Scientist Award.
Mentorship is central to his work. He has mentored medical students, medical and pharmacy residents, fellows, graduate students, and postdoctoral scientists, in the lab and at the bedside.
Outside the lab, Danny spends as much time as he can with his family in Mill Valley. He enjoys hiking, biking, kayaking, camping, traveling, and reading.