This training grant has functioned for two decades and the results have revolutionized the treatment of many major urological diseases including the research of two former residents, Drs. Herbert Lepor and Ellen Shapiro whose Alpha-1-andrenergic research studies on BPH were followed up by clinical studies of a urology resident, Craig Peters, who demonstrated the effects of androgens on BPH. This resulted in BPH urinary obstruction being treated medically thus resulting in a dramatic decrease in the number of BPH urinary obstruction surgeries. In 1992, a resident, Arthur Burnett, reported in Science on the role of nitric oxide in erections. This is now the key background concept for the subsequent development of treatments of erectile dysfunction. Three former trainees (Nelson, De Marzo, and Isaacs) reported (NEJM, 2003) on a new model for the etiology of abnormal prostate growth involving inflammation and DNA methylation. Current lab focus is on biomarkers, drugs that protect nerves, telesurgery, robot design , quantitative morphology, DNA organization and telomeres, genetic vaccines, new RNA markers and probes, urine markers, and developmental biology. The last three major urological chairmen appointed in the U. S. were trained, in part, in this lab program - Partin/Johns Hopkins;Schlegel/Cornell Univ.;Benson/Columbia Univ . Seven Ph.D.'s are now urological research directors. This grant requests support for five research trainees that are composed of three types: Post Resident Physician Scientists who have completed residency training and spend an additional one to two years in research;2.) Medical Urological Research Fellows who will spend one or more years in full-time research;3.) Postdoctoral Research Fellows - Ph.D.s or M.D., Ph.D.s in full-time research who have already completed graduate training at a basic science discipline;4.) Predoctoral Ph.D. Graduate Program Students carrying out their thesis in the urology labs who are not funded by this grant but who form part of the interacting research training environment. Each of these four components of our Urological Training Program contributes to the success of each part. The ability to understand the biology of the disease and to work on human pathological material with the application of precise molecular and pathological techniques that are now forthcoming provide a rich environment for training future research leaders to study devastating medical problems within the field of urology.
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