New Paper

Congrats to Firoj Alom on leading a recent project on local urothelial signaling and contractions, which was just published in Scientific Reports. Here is a brief summary: Signaling molecules released from the urothelium are known to play a sensory role in bladder contractions via neuronal signaling. It is also theorized that these molecules released from the urothelium could act locally to induce urothelial cell-mediated local bladder contractions. Here, we validated using an optogenetic technique that specific urothelial cell stimulation can induce urothelial cell-mediated local bladder contraction and studied signaling mechanisms of these local bladder contractions. Our approach in this study will have an impact on biomedical research regarding how we study the urothelial-to-detrusor muscle communication and the changes that may occur under disease conditions.