Grant: Project Grant

Urologic patients often present congenital/acquired pathologies requiring surgical reconstruction but it has been a challenge due to the limited availability of tissues, especially for the urethra. Therefore, it represents a major public health issue because nearly 2% of men will suffer from these pathologies and it has significant psychological impact. Interestingly, tissue engineering is a developing field that aims to replace or regenerate these dysfunctional tissues. In urology, bladder reconstruction has been the main topic of research and we have been part of that endeavour for the last 12 years. We are also interested in urethral tissue engineering, a field that have been under researched. Through collaborations, a genitourinary tubular graft was successfully assembled. It became obvious to use this tubular urological tissue as a urethral substitution model. In this project, we will evaluate the use of a tissue-engineered graft for urethral reconstruction. The reconstructed urethra should provide a better surgical material for the correction of complicated anomalies. We will test the construct in a rabbit model. The development of autologous urethras reconstructed by tissue engineering would be a major advance in the field of urology and would have a considerable clinical impact given the complications encountered in clinical practice.