Marshall L. Stoller, M.D.

Professor, Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco

Dr. Marshall Stoller has dedicated his >35-year academic career at the University of California San Francisco to pursue minimally invasive treatment and better understanding of nephrolithiasis. He has trained close to 35 fellows and >100 residents in the utilization and techniques of endourology.   He has wide research interests.  He helped bring laparoscopic approaches to urologic surgery and was involved in the early development of robotic applications in this arena.  He was among the first to appreciate that urinary stone disease is associated with cardiovascular health and postulated that stone disease may represent a vascular, rather than a urinary, abnormality in the kidney.  He has received numerous NIH grants to study stone disease, including a grant in which he developed the fruit fly as a unique invertebrate model to study stone pathogenesis, utilizing ICP-OES to assess the role of heavy metals in stone nidi. He also popularized the re-examination of Randall plaques to better understand the beginnings of stone formation within the renal papilla.  He illustrated that early stone elements start in the proximal periphery of the renal papilla and, with time, they develop within the distal tip of the papilla that can be appreciated via endoscopic view. In addition, he has developed new approaches to many other disease processes,  including the use of posterior tibial nerve stimulation (PTNS) for pelvic floor dysfunction, the realization of the utility of lemon juice products to increase urinary citrate, the formulation of  Moonstoneâ as a non-prescription option to increase urinary citrate, the use  of tagged microbubbles to facilitate a new minimally invasive technique to break up stones (developed in collaboration with Stanford Engineering and with Nobel Laureate Bob Grubbs at Caltech).  He also spearheaded the randomized controlled trial utilizing alpha lipoic acid as a potential new novel treatment of cystine nephrolithiasis,

Equally important to him has been his dedication to teaching and mentorship.  He enjoys teaching medical students (teaching awards at UCSF), teaching and mentoring urologic residents (teaching awards) and endourology fellows (Urology Care Foundation Mentor of the Year award).  He has also reached out to those working in many other disciplines outside of urology and has cross-pollinated ideas and techniques with them.  One of his fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations has been with Dr. Sunita Ho in the School of Dentistry. Working with her, he has leveraged correlative microscopy to help visualize stone formation. He has also developed insights from his work in the veterinary world- he has operated on many animals at the San Francisco Zoo, worked with vets at UC Davis School of Veterinarian Medicine. He has also worked with collaborators at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Molecular Foundry. He is grateful for the support of his Department, the School of Medicine and his loving family.