Nancy Ascher

Nancy L. Ascher is an American surgeon, and the first woman to perform a liver transplant. Ascher specialises in transplant surgery, focusing on end-stage kidney disease, kidney transplantation, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and liver transplantation.

Biography

Ascher is from Detroit, Michigan and is the third child of four. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a doctor who both placed a strong emphasis on serving the community.

Ascher completed her undergraduate and medical education at the University of Michigan. Ascher was one of only 20 women in a cohort of 2020 students and was one of two women to pursue surgey. She was asked to have an additional interview with a psychiatrist who asked inappropriate questions about her sex life.

In an interview she recalled how one Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology showed pictures of naked women during his class, during which the female students stood up and left.

She then went on to complete a general surgery residency and clinical transplantation fellowship at the University of Minnesota.

Ascher joined the faculty of the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota in 1982 and was named Clinical Director of the Liver Transplant Program. In 1988 she was recuited by the UCSF Department of Surgery to build a liver transplantation program. In 1991, she was appointed Chief of Transplantation, an expanded role that included liver, kidney and pancreas transplants.

In 1993, Ascher was appointed Vice-Chair of the UCSF Department of Surgery, and in 1999 was appointed Department Chair where she served until September 2016. Ascher has continued to work with the UCSF.

She has been a member of the Presidential Task Force on Organ Transplantation, the Surgeon General's Task Force on Increasing Donor Organs and the Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Open Transplantation. She was also invited to join the WHO Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues, which she joined as a member in 2018.

Ascher feels passionately about ending organ trafficking and has held positions at the Presidential Task Force on Organ Transplantation, the Surgeon General’s Task Force on Increasing Donor Organs, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation.

Awards

Ascher is the recipient of the Holly Smith Award for Exceptional Service for 2020. She was described by the award committee as a 'lighthouse of possibility' and that 'watching Nancy perform the most demanding of surgical operations is a never-ending source of inspiration'.

Media

Ascher and her pioneering work in organ transplantation is the focus of the third episode of Netflix’s docuseries ‘The Surgeon’s Cut' which was released in December 2020.

The episode focusses on the case of Marian, a patient with a nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and her 22 year old daughter Adriana. Ascher performed the removal in parts of Adriana's liver while her husband re-implanted the donor liver into Maria.

Personal Life

Ascher is married to fellow surgeon John Roberts - who was originally her student - and with whom she performed the first-ever live adult-to-child liver transplant that occurred at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1993.

She has two children; during both pregnancies, she went into labour whilst operating. Ascher gave a kidney to her sister, who passed away three years after the operation.

Ascher has noted that her desire to work in medicine stemmed from a love of horror films - which showed her how to overcome her fears within her job. Ascher was heavily influenced in her early career by the feminist movement.