September 19-25 is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Week. If you are planning a story on prostate cancer, a disease that’s diagnosed in more than 200,000 American men each year, please consider calling on experts from the Johns Hopkins Brady Urological Institute. With a variety of experts whose work truly follows the “bench to bedside” model of clinical research — focusing on developing innovative new treatments as well as basic research to better understand this common and sometimes deadly disease — the Brady Institute can provide you with unique sources who can answer your questions about prostate cancer. To schedule an interview with any of our urologists or researchers, please contact David March at 410-955-1534 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Alan Partin, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Partin, a professor of urology and director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Urology, has both a basic science and clinical interest in predicting prognosis for men with prostate cancer. Dr. Partin’s laboratories and clinical and surgical interests are focused on developing and testing new and existing methods for predicting the aggressiveness of prostate cancers so that doctors and patients can make informed treatment decisions. Dr. Partin’s laboratories have investigated new serum tests to diagnose prostate cancer with proteins that may help in the detection and staging of prostate cancer.

H. Ballentine Carter, M.D.

Dr. Carter, professor of urology and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Division of Adult Urology, runs the Expectant Management Program (also called active surveillance) for prostate cancer at Johns Hopkins. This program is designed to select men who are thought to have low-risk cancers and gives them the option to be carefully monitored as an alternative to immediate surgery or other treatments. Dr. Carter is working with the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (a study led by the National Institute on Aging) to further define the age-related events that lead to the development of prostate disease. He also pioneered the concept of PSA rate of change (PSA velocity) as a marker of prostate cancer presence and the use of free PSA to predict the behavior of prostate cancer.

Arthur Burnett, M.D., M.B.A.

Dr. Burnett is professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Basic Science Laboratory in Neurourology and the Male Consultation Clinic. He has performed more than 2,000 radical prostatectomy surgeries and is an expert in nerve-sparing techniques and the use of a single, minimally invasive 3-inch incision just above the pubic bone, which promotes rapid recovery and cosmetic appearance. He is recognized for being a world authority in the science and medicine of male erectile dysfunction and has pioneered work to develop therapies to protect penile nerve function required for improved erectile function recovery after radical prostatectomy.

Mohamad Allaf, M.D.

Dr. Allaf, an assistant professor of urology and biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of minimally invasive and robotic surgery, is an expert in performing nerve-sparing radical prostatectomy in all its forms: open, laparoscopic and robotic. His research focuses on ways to minimize the morbidity of urologic surgery, decrease injury to the neurovascular bundles and hasten erection recovery following radical prostatectomy. He has written and published numerous research articles, textbook chapters, and video presentations on laparoscopic and robotic urologic surgery.

Edward Schaeffer, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Shaeffer is an assistant professor of urology, oncology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Prostate Cancer Multidisciplinary Clinic. Specializing in prostate, bladder and kidney cancer, he is an expert in open, laparoscopic and robot surgical treatment of these malignancies. As an active member of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, he participates in multidisciplinary approaches to the treatment of genitourinary cancers. His research focuses on understanding how prostate cancers, especially high-risk varieties, initiate and grow. He has also studied the best ways to use PSA testing as a tool for cancer screening.

Misop Han, M.D.

Dr. Han, an associate professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has a clinical focus on nerve-sparing prostatectomies, including robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomies. His research interests center on predicting the outcome of surgery for prostate cancer. He led efforts to develop the “Han tables,” which predict the probability of prostate cancer recurrence up to 10 years following surgery. These tables correlate the three common factors known about a man’s prostate cancer, PSA level, Gleason score and clinical stage (or pathological stage), and are based on accumulated data from thousands of patients who had been treated for prostate cancer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Based on the result of the probability of recurrence, men and their doctors can decide the best course of treatment after surgery.

Patrick Walsh, M.D.

Dr. Walsh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is best known for his 30 years as the director of the Brady Urological Institute (1974–2004) and for his pioneering work in developing the nerve-sparing techniques that have reduced the probability of impotence and incontinence after radical prostatectomy. These techniques are now considered the gold standard for this surgery. He has also made major contributions to the basic understanding of benign and malignant tumors of the prostate. He is on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Together with Janet F. Worthington, he authored the best-selling books The Prostate: A Guide for Men and the Women Who Love Them, Johns Hopkins University Press (1995) and Warner Books (1997) and more recently, Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer, Warner Books (2001 and 2007).

Donald Coffey, Ph.D.

Dr. Coffey is the Catherine Iola and J. Smith Michael Distinguished Professor of Urology. He is also a member of the principal professional staff at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Hereceived his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1964, and since then, he has published over 200 research papers. His research focuses on understanding nuclear structure and DNA organization in normal and cancer cells, as well as how androgens affect prostate growth and the function of genes. He has also studied how temperature affects prostate cancer cells and how the use of heat might make prostate cancer treatments more effective.

Robert Getzenberg, Ph.D.

Dr. Getzenberg, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is the director of urology research. His laboratory investigates how cancer cells’ nuclear matrix differs when compared to normal cells and what role these differences play in cells becoming cancerous. This work could lead to new ways to diagnose and track prostate cancer progression. He is also leading research into identifying new biomarkers for prostate cancer and other urological diseases. His laboratory also studies new therapeutic approaches for cancer, including ways to use nanotechnology to focus heat on cancer cells. This heating makes the cancer cells more susceptible to conventional therapies.

Trinity Bivalacqua, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Bivalacqua is an assistant professor of urology and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Besides his expertise in open, endoscopic, laparoscopic and robotic surgery for prostate cancer, he also provides a range of approaches to recover sexual function after prostate cancer surgery, including inflatable penile prosthesis. Dr. Bivalacqua has received national and international recognition for his research involving the pathophysiology and novel treatment strategies for erectile dysfunction and priapism. His laboratory currently investigates novel molecular pathways that are involved in post-radical prostatectomy erectile dysfunction.

Christian Pavlovich, M.D.

Dr. Pavlovich is an associate professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of urological oncology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. His clinical focus is on prostate, kidney and bladder cancer and benign prostatic diseases, and he is experienced in open, laparoscopic and other minimally invasive surgery for the management of urologic tumors. He is a National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense-funded researcher who is working on early detection methods for prostate and kidney cancer, including novel biomarkers for these diseases.

R. Duane Cespedes, M.D.

Dr. Cespedes is an associate professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Women’s Center for Pelvic Health at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He is an expert in the treatment of male and female incontinence, pelvic floor prolapse, disorders of urination and neurologic issues affecting the urinary tract. He is well-versed in the treatment of male incontinence that sometimes develops as a side effect from prostate cancer treatment, and he is especially interested in using minimally invasive treatments, including bulking agents and Botox injections.

###

Source:  Johns Hopkins Medicine