Los Angeles: Surgeons from Keck Medicine of USC and UCLA Health have performed the world’s first-in-human bladder transplant. The surgery was successfully completed at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on May 4, 2025, in a joint effort by Inderbir Gill, MD, founding executive director of USC Urology, and Nima Nassiri, MD, urologic transplant surgeon and director of the UCLA Vascularized Composite Bladder Allograft Transplant Program.
“This surgery is a historic moment in medicine and stands to impact how we manage carefully selected patients with highly symptomatic ‘terminal’ bladders that are no longer functioning,” said Gill, who is also Chair and Distinguished Professor of Urology and Shirley and Donald Skinner Chair in Urologic Cancer Surgery with the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “Transplantation is a lifesaving and life-enhancing treatment option for many conditions affecting major organs, and now the bladder can be added to the list.”
“This first attempt at bladder transplantation has been over four years in the making,” Nassiri said. “For the appropriately selected patient, it is exciting to be able to offer a new potential option.”
Nassiri, formerly a urology resident with the Keck School and now assistant professor of urology and kidney transplantation at UCLA, and Gill worked together for several years at the Keck School to develop the new surgical technique, design a clinical trial and secure the necessary regulatory approvals.
Numerous pre-clinical procedures were performed both at Keck Medical Center of USC and OneLegacy, Southern California’s organ procurement organization, to prepare for this first-in-human bladder transplant.
The bladder transplant was done as part of a UCLA clinical trial. Gill and Nassiri hope to perform more bladder transplants together in the near future.
Inderbir S. Gill, MD, is Chairman & Distinguished Professor, Catherine & Joseph Aresty Department of Urology; Executive Director, USC Institute of Urology; and the Shirley & Donald Skinner Chair in Urologic Cancer Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Prior to this, he was chairman & professor, department of urology at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, where he was on faculty for 12 years (1997-2009).
