Matthew Levine, MD, PhD

Matthew Levine, MD PhD, is associate professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and Surgical Co-Director of the Transplant Center and Surgical Director of Kidney Transplantation at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Clinically, he is a liver, kidney, and pancreas transplant surgeon in both adults and pediatric patients.  He is the transplant liaison for the limb transplant programs at Penn in adults and children and he helped to facilitate the first successful limb transplant in a child.

He is the PI on basic science projects spanning four broad areas of related interest in transplantation.  The first is the role that histone/protein acetylation and de-acetylation plays in the tolerance of ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI), predominantly in kidney and liver models.  He is the PI on K08 and R01 grants from the NIH/NIDDK with the work performed in collaboration with the laboratory of Wayne Hancock at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The second area of research focuses on gender-specific hormonal effects IRI and the specific impact of estrogen on mitigation of renal ischemic injury.  This work has resulted in a phase 1/early phase 2 human clinical interventional trial testing the impact of perioperative estrogen in preserving early renal allograft function. The third broad aspect of scientific inquiry has focused on vascularized composite tissue allotransplantation (limb transplant) models in mice with a focus on tolerance induction. Lastly, he has long-term interest and publication history in transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and has participated in collaborative research in immunoprofiling in lung cancer.