Urologial Diseases in a Aging Society: From Genetic to Medical Csre (UroAgeCare)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Roland Schüle
• Subject Area: Reproductive Medicine, Urology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464635516

High patient age and frailty are characterized by an inappropriate response to stress, that results in a higher frequency of adverse outcomes in benign and malignant disease. This ultimately leads to clinical scenarios where response to medical or surgical treatment may result in higher levels of mortality, institutionalization and disability. Information on the genetic, epigenetic and immunological background of this condition as compared to a standard patient population is scarce and still a matter of debate. Noteworthy, despite ongoing evolution of novel surgical and medical interventions in urology, selection criteria of clinical trials commonly result in an underestimation or exclusion of patients with high age or low performance status. Given the demographic development in Western countries, with increasing numbers of patients in advanced ages and with a growing number of comorbidities, a more profound analysis of the relevance of age and frailty is worthwhile. Urology represents the medical specialty that is most affected by the growing demographic of older adults as urological problems are by nature more common in elderly people, and care of patients aged 65 and older represents a large proportion of urologists’ practices. However, no explicit efforts on a research level, neither experimental nor translational, have been made till now in urology, so that we face a tremendeous deficite in our knowledge when taking care on elder patients in a clinical setting.To create a base for future more specific diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to urological conditions in this patient cohort, more in depth multidisciplinary research evaluating• the natural history and physiology of urological disease associated with age and frailty• specifics of the complex alterations in molecular biology, immunology, metabolism, and other age dependent factors contributing to responsiveness to medical or surgical treatment (i.e.pharmacogenetics, surgical outcome studies) • interaction with concurrent disease and their implications for the respective treatment• health-economic relevance of assessment and interventions in aged and frail patients under the aspect of providing information on quality-of-life-adjusted treatmentThe objective of the DFG-Nachwuchsakademie: Urological Diseases in an Ageing Society: From Genetics to Medical Care (UroAgeCare) is to integrate current cutting-edge knowledge from clinicians and researchers from diverse medical fields into an inter-professional faculty addressing all aspects of urological disease and care under the specific topic of age and frailty. Given the high expertise of the delineated faculty members, a selected group of young researchers will be able to generate high quality proposals, tailored for the individual project while opening additional reach beyond the field of urology.

• DFG Programme: Workshops for Early Career Investigators