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D. Montgomery Bissell, M.D.
Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine
Director Emeritus, UCSF Liver Center
Contact Information
| Academic Office Division of Gastroenterology 513 Parnassus Avenue, Room S-357 San Francisco, CA 94143-0358 Phone: (415) 476-2777 Fax: 415-476-0659 Montgomery.Bissell@ucsf.edu | Liver Transplant Program 400 Parnassus Ave., Sixth Floor San Francisco, CA 94143 Phone: (415) 353-1888 Gastroenterology and Liver Faculty Practice 350 Parnassus Ave., Suite 410 San Francisco, CA 94143 Phone: (415) 353-2318 |
BiographyEducation
- Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, A.B., 1962, English
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, M.D., 1967, Medicine
Residencies
- Harvard Medical Service, Boston City Hospital, Residency training, 1967-70, Internal Medicine
Postdoctoral Training
- University of California, San Francisco, Research training, 1970-73, Liver Biology
Board Certification
- American Board of Internal Medicine
Program Affiliations
- Member, UCSF Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (BMS)
- UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
- UCSF Liver Center
Clinical Expertise
- Alcoholic Liver Disease
- Autoimmune Hepatitis
- Benign Liver Tumors
- Cirrhosis
- Fulminant Hepatic Failure
- Hepatitis B
- Hepatitis C
- Hepatocellular Carcinoma (Liver Cancer)
- Live Donor Liver Transplantation
- Liver Transplantation
- Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
- Primary Biliary Cirrhosis
- Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis
Research Interests
- Liver Injury and Repair
Biography
Dr. D. Montgomery Bissell is Professor of Medicine and Director Emeritus of the UCSF Liver Center, an NIH-funded consortium of 40 independently funded researchers who study the liver and its diseases. Bissell has a career-long interest in liver disease, dating to when he conducted a project on hepatocellular carcinoma in East Africa as a Harvard medical student. He then turned his attention to defining the cellular responses and molecular regulation of the scarring process known as fibrosis and cirrhosis. The latter is the most important consequence of many chronic liver diseases including inborn errors of metabolism, viral hepatitis, autoimmune states, alcohol abuse and others. It also is the setting for most cases of liver cancer.
Since 1981, Bissell has led the Rice-Liver Center Laboratory at San Francisco General Hospital, known internationally for basic research on fibrosis and defining new therapies to block fibrosis progression in patients. He is a member of several professional organizations including the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians and has served on numerous review panels for NIH, the Veterans Administration and other groups.
Research Summary
My laboratory investigates tissue remodeling in liver injury. We have been focusing recently on oval cells, which are liver progenitor cells and proliferate in several forms of liver injury. Oval cells, can be isolated and, with expansion in culture, hold promise for cell-based therapy of a variety of liver diseases. We have recently defined a member of the TNF-alpha family of cytokines that appears to be a specific growth factor for a subset of oval cells. We are interested also in mechanisms of the fibrotic response to biliary injury. We have found that TGFβ and the integrin αvβ6 have key roles.
Selected Publications
- Bissell DM. Therapy for hepatic fibrosis: Revisiting the preclinical models. Clin Res Hepatol Gastroenterol. 2011 Sep; 35(8-9):521-5.
- Bissell DM. Inflammation and hepatic fibrosis. Semin Liver Dis. 2010 Aug; 30(3):211-4.
- Bissell DM. Of mentors, mentoring, and extracellular matrix. Hepatology. 2009 Nov; 50(5):1330-8.
- Chang ML, Chen JC, Alonso CR, Kornblihtt AR, Bissell DM. Regulation of fibronectin splicing in sinusoidal endothelial cells from normal or injured liver. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2004;101:18093-98.
- Kikuchi S, Griffin CT, Wang SS, Bissell DM. Role of cd44 in epithelial wound repair: migration of rat hepatic stellate cells utilizes hyaluronic acid and cd44v6. J Biol Chem 2005;280:15398-404.
