Brian Lee

Dr. Brian Lee is a transplant nephrologist focused on caring for adult and young adult patients with end-stage kidney disease who might benefit from a kidney transplant. His team performs evaluations to get patients on the kidney transplant wait list, evaluates prospective living donors and ensures compatibility between donors and recipients. He serves as medical director of the UCSF Living Kidney Donor Program.

In addition to helping complete presurgical workups, Lee cares for patients after surgery and follows up with patients to manage immunosuppression and any complications that occur. If a patient's kidneys fail after the surgery, he helps evaluate them for a second transplant.

Lee's research focuses on living donation. He studies the barriers to donation, the outcomes of transplants from living donors and ways to optimize kidney function and longevity following living donor transplantation. He also studies how to desensitize recipients – lower antibody levels – to lower the risk of a rapid, severe rejection of the transplanted organ.

Lee earned his medical degree at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the Case Western Reserve University, where he also completed a fellowship in nephrology. He then completed a fellowship in transplant nephrology at UCSF, subsequently joining the faculty. He has also completed a fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona so that he could inform patients on the use of complementary and alternative medicine during the kidney transplant process.

Lee belongs to the American Society of Transplantation, National Kidney Registry and American Society of Nephrology.