Mendelsohn Group

Project Description

At present there is no way to repair or regenerate the damaged urothelium. The studies proposed here are aimed at generating a molecular atlas of urothelial/stromal signaling molecules that are important for urothelial patterning in the UPJ, straight ureter, distal ureter, bladder and trigone. We propose to identify a set of markers that can be used for isolation and purification of urothelial sub-populations.

This molecular atlas will be important for developing strategies for urothelial repair and regeneration and for programming IPS cells to generate urothelial sub-populations. The urothelium is also a source of cells that give rise to bladder cancers, a group of lesions with distinct morphology and clinical behavior. Although cancer is outside the scope of NIDDK, our studies in the mouse paved the way for identification of urothelial progenitor populations that give rise to distinct bladder cancer subtypes (Van Batavia et al., 2014), a study that helps explain the diversity in clinical and morphological features observed in urothelial carcinoma in human patients.