Grant: Project Grant

Urologic patients often present congenital/acquired pathologies requiring surgical reconstruction. Still, it has been challenging due to the limited availability of tissues, especially for the urethra. Therefore, it represents a significant public health issue because nearly 1% of men will suffer from these pathologies, and it has a considerable psychological impact. Interestingly, tissue engineering is a field of research that aims to replace or regenerate these dysfunctional tissues. In urology, bladder reconstruction has been the leading research topic, and we have been part of that endeavor for the last 15 years. We are also interested in urethral tissue engineering, an under-researched field. Through collaborations, a urethral graft was successfully assembled. It became apparent to use this urological tissue as a urethral substitution model. Therefore, we propose to reconstruct a urethral substitute using patient's cells, and free of synthetic material. No other team in Canada is involved in the search for alternatives and we have been leaders in the field of urological tissue engineering for 15 years. In this project, we will evaluate the use of a tissue-engineered graft for urethral reconstruction. The reconstructed urethra should provide better surgical material for correcting complicated congenital anomalies in children. We will test this construct in a rabbit model. The development of urethras reconstructed by tissue engineering would be a significant advance in the field of urology and would have a considerable clinical impact given the complications encountered in clinical practice.