Mission Statement
The GU Center of Excellence is based at UPMC Shadyside. It has a broad agenda focused on achieving excellence in clinical service, resident/fellow education, and translational research.
The Center of Excellence supports diagnostic services at Presbyterian, Shadyside and Magee-Womens Hospital. In addition, it also receives biopsy material from many outpatient clinics run by the University of Pittsburgh Health Systems. This COE provides skilled interpretation in the surgical pathology of GU diseases (prostate/ urinary bladder/ kidney/ testis). This mission supports the focused efforts in GU oncology and GU diseases, by the Division of Urologic Surgery and the GU Oncology division of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
The GU Center of Excellence is active in housestaff education, with much of the educational efforts focused on training of residents through case analysis and discussion. A wealth of internal material is supplemented by an active consultation service and an extensive slide teaching collection and study sets. House-staff officers are trained in the applications of histochemistry, immunohistochemistry, and molecular biological techniques in the evaluation of clinical and pathologic diagnostic problems. Our research focus is largely oriented toward utilizing our own and the resources of the Molecular Anatomic Pathology section of the Division of Anatomic Pathology for assessing the relationship of surgical pathology to molecular pathology to clinical outcome. A major focus is identifying and validating novel markers for diagnostic and prognostic use. The GU COE will play a significant role in the real time molecular processing laboratory being set up at UPMC Shadyside, under the supervision of William LaFramboise. This laboratory will evaluate genomic profiles of the resected tumors and incorporate the profile into the routine diagnostic report. This effort is a result of our funded efforts in the area of "Molecular classification of prostate cancer". The initial genomic profiling will focus on prostate cancer and will be expanded to other tumor types as we gain insight into the expression profiles of these other tumor types.