James V Guarrera, MD, MD

Biography

James V. Guarrera, MD, FACS is Professor and Chief of Liver Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School where he also served as Interim Chair of Surgery for 2 and a half years. Dr. Guarrera is certified by the American Board Surgery, The American Society of Transplant Surgeons and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Guarrera received his M.D. degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he was elected to AOA and won the Arthur Aufses Sr. Prize in Surgery. He completed his internship and residency in General Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center and fellowship training in Multi-Organ Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery also at Columbia University. Prior to coming to Rutgers NJMS, Dr. Guarrera held key leadership positions as Surgical Director of Adult Liver Transplantation and Program Director for the Abdominal Transplant/Hepatobiliary Fellowship and Rotating Surgical Residents at Columbia University Medical Center/ New York Presbyterian Hospital
Dr. Guarrera is an extensive contributor to the medical literature with a Scopus H-index of 32 and over 100 scientific papers, reviews and book chapters. He is a reviewer for numerous journals and is on the editorial board of the journal Liver Transplantation and Frontiers in Transplantation. He is acknowledged as an international expert and pioneer in Ex-vivo Machine Preservation of donor organs. He is distinguished as the first to clinically preserve human livers using ex-vivo continuous machine perfusion. This work earned him the ASTS Vanguard Award in 2011 in recognition of the most influential manuscript in the field of transplantation for the year. His novel techniques paved the way for ex-vivo liver machine perfusion procedures now being implemented by many groups worldwide and is quickly becoming standard of care. Consequently, he is a co-inventor on eight U.S. Patents related to novel technology in Liver Transplantation and Organ Preservation. In addition, Dr. Guarrera served as the Principal Investigator for a U.S. multicenter clinical trial to improve transplant results by using new ex-vivo portable liver perfusion technology and is the founding Medical Director of the Lifeport Preservation Center of New Jersey at University Hospital.
In the laboratory, he continues this work to further elucidate molecular mechanisms and develop techniques to confer protection from ischemia/ reperfusion injury in the transplanted liver. Recently, Dr. Guarrera was the recipient of the 2016 Rising Stars in Transplantation Award and the 2021 Pipeline Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. He serves on several national and international committees in surgery, liver disease, transplantation and organ preservation.