Lynda Frassetto, MD

Lynda Frassetto, MD, is a Professor Emeritus of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at the University of California, San Francisco (USCF). She grew up in the greater New York metropolitan area and attended college and medical school in Connecticut. She trained as a nephrologist at UCSF and was in private practice in San Francisco before returning to UCSF to start her research career with Drs. Anthony Sebastian and R. Curtis Morris Jr. Over approximately 20 years, the group published papers on regulation of acid base balance in healthy and aging people and dietary influences on acid-base balance in healthy people and those with diabetes. Dr. Frassetto also collaborates with Dr. Leslie Z Benet, past chair of the Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences at UCSF. Dr. Benet has pioneered a novel model predicting drug interactions in vivo, depending on the degree of in vitro membrane transporter and intracellular metabolizing enzyme interactions with a specific drug, xenobiotic or toxin. These predictions are then tested in clinical trials in healthy people and those with kidney disease, diabetes or HIV before and after transplantation. In addition to research, Dr. Frassetto was the director of the adult Clinical Research Center at the Parnassus Campus in UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and still supervises inpatient and outpatient care at three of the University’s hospital campuses. For the last several years, she has also been participating in and teaching programs that teach UC students and faculty better communication and behavioral stress modification techniques.