John Kurhanewicz BS, PhD

John Kurhanewicz, PhD is a Professor in Residence in the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Urology and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the California Institute for Quantitative Biology and UCSF Cancer Center, and faculty in the UCSF-UCB Bioengineering Graduate Group. He is the Director of the UCSF Body Research Interest Group, the Biomedical NMR lab, and the Kurhanewicz Laboratory at UCSF. Dr. Kurhanewicz received his BS in Chemistry from the University of South Florida/New College in 1982, and obtained his PhD in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of South Florida, Tampa in 1987, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in MRI/MRS from the University of California, San Francisco in 1990.

Dr. Kurhanewicz and his colleagues have developed a large prostate cancer imaging program at UCSF, involving the application of advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques (metabolic, diffusion and perfusion weighted MRI) to provide a more accurate assessment of the extent and aggressiveness of prostate cancer in individual patients. This multiparametric 1H MRI prostate cancer staging exam is currently being used to help over a 1,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer a year at UCSF to decide on their best therapeutic course. He is also currently involved in the development and clinical translation of an extraordinary new molecular imaging technique utilizing hyperpolarized 13C labeled metabolic substrates that has the potential to revolutionize the way MR imaging is used in the risk assessment of prostate cancer patients. He led the first clinical trial of this technology at UCSF and is involved in three ongoing clinical trials investigating its clinical utility.