Volume 15 Issue 4, April 2018

Novel surgical tools demand revision of our anatomical knowledge. Anatomical drawings are extraordinarily useful to describe organs and highlight surgical details, representing an exceptional method of teaching and learning. DRAW is a new non-profit website with the aim of increasing knowledge of urological surgical anatomy through submissions from urologists.

Most genetic analyses of prostate cancer have studied white men. A new study compares the genetic landscape of prostate cancer in Chinese men, reporting both similarities and differences. This finding highlights the need for studies to include all races and paves the way for future personalized medicine approaches for prostate cancer across races.

Preventative use of serum PSA screening is controversial and generally undertaken as a shared decision between doctor and patient. A new study identifies a link between individuals' numeracy, or facility with quantitative concepts, and their understanding of the risk reduction benefits of PSA testing.

Results of two large randomized controlled trials have challenged the use of medical expulsive therapy for the management of ureteral calculi. A new trial now shows that tamsulosin is effective in patients with distal calculi >5 mm in size, demonstrating that the effectiveness of MET depends on stone size and location.

In this Review, Colaco et al. describe applications of 3D printing relevant to urology, which include the generation of inorganic models for surgical planning and education, the production of inorganic prostheses and devices, and 3D printing for bioengineering of organic structures.

Genomic aberrations of thePTENtumour suppressor are among the most common in prostate cancer. In this Review, the authors describe the roles of PTEN, consider how PTEN status could act as a potential prognostic and predictive biomarker, and discuss the potential of PTEN and its downstream pathways as a therapeutic target.

Lee and Gujar review the potential of virotherapy to increase the effectiveness of immunotherapies in prostate cancer. They discuss how oncolytic viruses can improve anticancer immunological responses and strategies for combining virotherapy with other immunotherapies to obtain improved patient outcomes.

The introduction of immune checkpoint inhibition has improved the outcomes of a subset of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC); however, the majority of patients fail to respond to this approach. In this perspective, the authors describe the evidence for use of radiotherapy in combination with immune checkpoint inhibition to enhance the immunogenicity of patients' tumours and therefore enhance responsiveness to immune checkpoint inhibition in patients with advanced-stage MIBC.