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The study used the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, administered orally, to disrupt the metabolism of prostate cancer cells and bring the medication directly into treatment-resistant cells. A preclinical study offers a potential new therapy for treatment-resistant prostate cancer, offering new hope for men with the disease. The study used the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, administered orally, to disrupt the metabolism of prostate cancer cells and bring the medication directly into treatment-resistant cells. University of Miami researchers validated their targets in human prostate cancer biopsies. Then they tested the treatment in human cancer cells and a mouse model of prostate cancer, to show...

On March 30, a major Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), expelled a well-respected urologist from its medical staff because he voiced concerns about the unhealthy nature of homosexual behavior and objected to the hospital’s aggressive promotion of “gay pride” activities. Dr. Paul Church has been a urologist on the BIDMC staff in Boston for nearly 30 years. He is a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. He has done research on diagnosing prostate and bladder cancer, and has been a frequent volunteer for medical mission projects in Mexico and Africa. He has also spoken...

Doctor tells Obama supporters: Go elsewhere for health care A Mount Dora doctor posted a sign telling Obama health care supporters to go elsewhere. MOUNT DORA — A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere." "I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign...

CHICAGO - A suburban Chicago urology practice says college basketball's March Madness tournament is the perfect time for men to get a vasectomy. Doctors at 21st Century Urology in Orland Park have launched a two-week ad campaign to induce men to schedule the procedure during the days before the first two weekends of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, the Chicago Press Release Service reports. The doctors say picking that time slot for a vasectomy will allow basketball aficionados to stay home and watch all the games. All vasectomy patients will receive a free pizza to snack on and a bag...

Dr. Rodriguez discussed use of stem cells for treating SUI (Stress Urinary Incontinence). A stem cell is embryonic, adult, or engineered. Embryonic stem cells come from the blastocyst which is totipotent or pluripotent. These cells are immortal, identical clonal cells with long-term self renewal. Controversies include possible tumor formation, the difficulty maintaining cell cultures and ethical issues. Embryonic stem cells can differentiate into ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm. Adult stem cells include hematopoetic stem cells, such as derived from bone marrow. This requires a bone marrow harvest, with low yield and difficulty to expand clones. A variety of other tissues have...

Improving urethral function has been an elusive target for researchers seeking viable treatments for stress urinary incontinence (SUI). However, Los Angeles researchers suggest that adipose-derived pluripotent cells may be a viable means to treat SUI and also improve urethral function. Using human cells obtained from liposuction specimens, investigators differenciated stem cells into smooth muscle, seeded the cells on carrier matrices and injected them into the proximal urethra of incontinent nude rats. Abdominal leak-point pressure and retrograde urethral perfusion pressure were measured both pre- and post-operatively. Smooth muscle cells seeded on the carrier matrix demonstrated long-term improvement, providing immediate bulking effects...

Human fatty tissue has been shown to be a viable, pluripotent source for stem cells that can be differentiated into a variety of cell lineages, including bone, muscle and neural cell types. San Francisco researchers investigated whether autologous adipose-derived stem cells could be differentiated into urologic tissues that could be used for reconstructive purposes. Investigators harvested paragonadal adipose tissue from rat specimens and processed the tissue to yield the stem cells, which were then suspended in a phosphate-buffered solution (PBS) and injected into the bladder and proximal urethra of 16 Sprague-Dawley rats. A control group of 16 animals received PBS...

April 3, 2006 — The news is being hailed as a medical milestone: Several years after receiving new bladders engineered entirely in a laboratory, seven young patients are all still healthy. It marks the first long-term success of total-organ tissue regeneration, an area of medicine that until now was more the stuff of science fiction than clinical reality. Dr. Anthony Atala, the director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, reports in tomorrow's issue of the medical journal The Lancet on the success of the new procedure, which was performed on children born with...

Bladders created in the laboratory from a patient's own cells and then implanted in seven young people have achieved good long-term results in all of them, a team of researchers reported yesterday in a medical journal. It takes about two months to grow the new bladder on a scaffold outside the body. After implantation, the engineered bladder enlarges over time in the recipient. The researchers say they expect that the new bladder will last a patient's lifetime, but the longevity will be known only as the children grow older. The hope is that someday the experimental reconstruction procedure will be...

Premature ejaculation drug delays climax Monday May 23, 1:13 pm ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first drug formulated to treat premature ejaculation delayed climax and increased reported satisfaction in a late-stage study, its developer, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ - News), said on Monday. A Phase III clinical trial of 2,614 men showed the drug provided "significant improvements in sexual function, including ejaculatory control, satisfaction with sexual intercourse for men and their partners, and increases in intravaginal ejaculatory latency time," Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, a unit of J&J, said in a statement. The drug, called dapoxetine, is being co-developed by J&J's Alza Corp....

For the more than 230,000 men who develop prostate cancer annually in the US, there's hopeful news - a revolutionary type of photodynamic therapy developed in Israel has shown great promise - and could eventually be used to treat a myriad of other cancers as well.