Urology
- Clinical reasearch on urological tumors, renal transplants, male infertility, micturition/bladder function and other related diseases
- Identification of biomarkers for urological tumors
- Establishment of individualized and custom-made treatment options based on experience with more than 2000 cases of kidney transplants
- Identification and analysis of novel genes associated with spermatogenesis and possible clinical applications
- Molecular and physiological analysis of micturition/bladder function using knockout mice and other model systems
Translational research on a wide range of research topics including the search for biomarkers of urological tumors
Urology, is a medical and surgical specialty that targets diseases of the kidneys, the urinary tract, adrenal glands, the retroperitoneum and male reproductive organs. As a surgical discipline, it covers also a wide range of additional medical specialties and conditions including oncology, urinary function analysis, kidney transplantation studies, androgynous gynecology, prostatology, childhood and female urological pathologies, sexual function studies, infectious diseases and diagnostic imaging and endoscopy.
Our research group is conducting clinical and basic research on a wide array of topics. We focus especially on the study of urological tumors, and aim to identify novel biomarkers of tumors of the urinary tract by analyzing patient blood and urine samples via liquid biopsy or surgically removed tumor tissues for the presence of tumor specific nucleic acids or proteins. In this context we have successfully identified diagnostically useful microRNAs specifically expressed in kidney cancer tissues or in urine exosomes of bladder cancer patients.
Our department has also a long history of kidney transplantations, having started in 1965 and has reached more than 2000 cases. We offer personalized custom-made treatment and are also working on innovative approaches to overcome the rejection of kidney transplantations, including novel gene therapy-based therapeutic options. We also developed a novel hydrogen-based technological approach to suppress active oxygen species, which is believed to be the cause of various diseases including chronic kidney disease. Another area of ongoing research deals with the elucidation of causative genes underlying male infertility via appropriate mouse model systems. We use knock-out mice to analyze the function of novel genes cloned either from mouse testis or found to be associated with human male infertility via genome analysis. We also study bladder function and micturition. To this end we developed an advanced experimental model system that can evaluate micturition and bladder function using knock-out mice.
