On the forefront of regenerative medicine.

Regenerative engineering: a safer way to help children with severe bladder disorders

Becca was born with bladder exstrophy, a rare congenital condition where the urinary bladder develops open and outside of the abdominal wall. Just 19 hours after her birth, a pediatric urologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital (now Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago) repaired her bladder and closed her abdominal wall.

Approximately half of patients with exstrophy will also require bladder augmentation enterocystoplasty — a major surgery that enlarges the bladder so it can store more urine and reduce internal pressures to prevent kidney damage. Babies born with other conditions, such as spina bifida, also typically undergo this complex procedure.

“There are numerous short and long-term complications associated with this surgery, including bladder perforation and metabolic imbalances. Unfortunately, there’s currently no clinical alternative,” says biomedical engineer Arun Sharma, who directs pediatric urological regenerative medicine at Lurie Children’s, and surgical research at the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute.

Bladder buzz: technologies to improve bladder surgery and monitoring

A collaborative NIH-funded team at Northwestern University is working to change that. They are tackling the issues from two different vantage points: improving bladder function by utilizing a cell-seeded, biodegradable construct that both augments the bladder and facilitates tissue regeneration, along with enhancing patient monitoring by developing an implantable bladder sensor. Their research, many years in the making, has reached an important clinical milestone—evaluating their technologies in non-human primate models.

Implantable Sensor Could Lead to Timelier Crohn’s Treatment

Northwestern University scientists has developed the first wireless, implantable temperature sensor to detect inflammatory flareups in patients with Crohn’s disease. The approach offers long-term, real-time monitoring and could enable clinicians to act earlier to prevent or limit the permanent damage caused by inflammatory episodes.

Sensor Monitors Bladder Fullness

At A Glance

• A collaboration of researchers at Northwestern University developed a wireless implantable device that can monitor bladder filling and emptying in real time and send data to a smartphone.
• With further development, this type of device could help monitor recovery after bladder surgery and aid patients who have compromised bladder function.

Functional bladder tissue regenerated using bone marrow cells

Scientists from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University succeeded in regenerating fully functional urinary bladder tissue in a long-term study utilizing a non-human primate model.

Prospects for Crohn's Relief Brighten With New Advancements

May 2, 2024 – More than 1 million Americans live with Crohn’s, a chronic and sometimes crippling inflammatory bowel disease that affects the intestines and leads to digestive issues. While some people may have mild symptoms or even be symptom-free at times, others get severe belly pain, diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, anemia, and other life-threatening complications.

Synthetic ‘bladder patch’ promotes tissue regeneration, restores function

A research team led by SQI member Arun Sharma has developed a synthetic, flexible “bladder patch” that outperformed the current standard surgery for severe bladder dysfunction in a long-term, large-animal model — the last step before beginning clinical trials.

Neonatal stem cells from the heart could treat Crohn's disease

Research from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago found that direct injection of neonatal mesenchymal stem cells, derived from heart tissue discarded during surgery, reduces intestinal inflammation and promotes wound healing in a mouse model of Crohn's disease-like ileitis, an illness marked by chronic intestinal inflammation and progressive tissue damage.

Novel injectable therapy shows promise in treating Crohn’s disease

A team of Simpson Querrey Institute (SQI) researchers led by Arun Sharma has demonstrated that a direct injection of anti-inflammatory peptide amphiphiles (PAs) into intestinal lesions can reduce lesion size and inflammation in an animal model of Crohn’s disease, a chronic condition that is notoriously difficult to treat.