This may be our most exciting issue yet. Our cover story takes you inside SLICE, our state-of-the-art Surgical Learning and Innovation Center of Excellence, with the Patrick C. Walsh Discovery and Learning Laboratory serving as a main feature. Ahmed Ghazi’s patented, custom-designed surgical models are revolutionizing the practice and performance of complex cases, as well as the training of surgeons and residents. Then, I highlight how our Brady surgeons are performing not just minimally invasive surgery, but noninvasive surgery. We are not just using scalpels, but ablation-guided interventions: zapping, freezing, and steaming cancerous tissue – even kidney tumors!

We have good news for patients at every stage of prostate cancer, from active surveillance (proof for the first time that diet can slow the growth of cancer; to radiation therapy (a new approach to protect the rectum; to metastatic cancer treatment (for some patients, gene-targeted drugs are killing the cancer without the need for hormonal therapy). We also celebrate the amazing career of world-renowned molecular geneticist William Isaacs, who is retiring after more than three decades at the Brady.

Finally, findings by Jeannie Hoffman-Censits and colleagues, in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, have led to FDA approval for a new treatment combination for bladder cancer. Doctors and scientists at our Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute are offering new hope to patients at all stages of bladder cancer. As Dr. Hoffman-Censits puts it: For patients with locally advanced and metastatic urothelial cancer of the bladder and upper tracts, “2024 has been an uncommon and incredibly hopeful year.” Hope abounds at the Brady, and I am proud to show you some of the many things we are doing in this issue of Discovery.

Mohamad E. Allaf, M.D.
Jakurski Family Director
The James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute Johns Hopkins Medicine