Extracellular Matrix Update — Overview

Abstract

This is a very exciting time in urology, and in biology in general. The urology departments at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania are to be congratulated for their efforts in convening this meeting. They have invited a group of speakers here who are figures in the field. I would encourage you to pick their brains and the rest of their bodies, if need be, to get the information that is unique. There is no sense reinventing all the wheels that others have picked up. One of the best examples, for instance, is that everyone knows that the bladder is full of liquid whose isotonicity changes fairly rapidly. The amount of ammonia, urea, and pH to name but a few parameters change quite drastically over time. But let us have a look around and we find that very similar types of events take place in the stomach. If we look in the stomach we see that there is the same network of proteins underneath the double layered membrane itself. So instead of gastric mucosa, there is urothelium, but there are really the same kinds of molecules present. This is an exciting time in urology because research, now at a fundamental level, has become a part of the everyday experience of the residents, fellows, and faculty in academic medical centers. This is the first conference that will focus on extracellular matrix in the bladder and I hope this is just one of the many to follow. To put things in perspective, six years ago at the NIH, the budget in urology was about 4.2 million dollars and it was mostly stone disease. No one thought that was there anything interesting in the bladder. Now the budget is around 30 million dollars and it is on a graphic upswing. It is up to you to keep it going in that direction.