Cell Therapy for Stress Urinary Incontinence and Other Age-Related Diseases
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Endocrinology and Metabolism".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 33845
Special Issue Editor
Interests: cell therapy; mesenchymal stromal cells; organoids; preclinical animal models in urology; bladder cancer
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Stress urinary incontinence is associated with a loss of contraction force or control of the urethral sphincter muscle. This may be caused by injury of lower pelvic floor tissue or its nerve supply (e.g., through vaginal delivery or by surgery), age-related loss of muscle cells and myofibres, changes in tissue elasticity associated with hormonal changes in menopause and other reasons. In Western countries, overall, about 13% of the population suffer from urinary incontinence. This propels expenses for management and treatment to the top levels of annual costs for both healthcare insurance enterprises and affected individuals. Conservative treatment options for patients suffering from incontinence include physical muscle exercise, sometimes in combination with electrophysical stimulation, and pharmacological intervention. If these therapies fail to satisfy the patient or insufficiently improve the situation, surgical intervention may help. However, surgery in most cases only improves the sequela of incontinence but does not cure the cause of it, i.e., loss of muscle function by loss of either innervation or contractile muscle tissue.
Rehabilitation of the contractile muscle function by injection of regeneration-facilitating cells is the key challenge of cell-based therapy for stress urinary incontinence. In this Special Issue, we discuss several aspects of cell therapies for urinary incontinence. We introduce our readers to the clinical problem, report on the latest development of pre-clinical animal studies and discuss several technical issues, including animal serum-free production of cells under good manufacturing practice (GMP) conditions, selection of suitable biomaterials and requirement for bioreactors to upscale cell production for clinical situations. We introduce the readers to a novel technology to inject cells by a waterjet instead of needles and report on the latest development of recent as well as current clinical feasibility studies of cell therapies.
We complement this Special Issue with an overview of cell therapy for the heart and discuss possibilities to replace, at least in some situations, autologous cell therapy with homologous cell applications. In addition, we invite other authors to offer their expertise in cell-based therapies for age-related disorders.
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm K. Aicher
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Stress urinary incontinence
- Cell therapy
- Pre-clinical studies
- GMP cell production
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