Urology 2023

• 103,000+ patient visits

• $3 million pledged for philanthropy

• 340 publications

• Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO) accredited fellowship program added

Milestones are meant to be celebrated and surpassed. For the year 2022, our milestones at the Milton and Carroll Petrie Department of Urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are a reflection of our collective efforts to save lives—through the patient care we are so passionate about, the pool of extraordinary talent we have built and continue to grow, and our groundbreaking research and scholastic activities.

It has been a year of unprecedented success for us. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 14 in Urology in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Our surgeons and scientists have pioneered the adoption of novel diagnostic techniques and minimally invasive treatments for prostate, kidney, and bladder cancers and a wide range of urologic disorders. Our transgender program has been an outstanding success with an increase from 126 cases in 2021 to 164 cases projected in 2022. A milestone was achieved in February 2022 of 300 transgender cases completed since the launch of the program.

We are also making progress in other ways. Our flagship initiative of 2022, the Mount Sinai Robert F. Smith Prostate Cancer Screening Unit, was launched on April 1, 2022, to support prostate health in the Black community, enabling early detection of prostate cancer for at-risk Black men. It has screened more than 1,800 patients—18 percent of those patients had an elevated PSA resulting in follow-up care with a urologist. The unit participated in more than 62 events and community health fairs throughout New York City’s five boroughs, plus Westchester and Orange counties. The unit and our initiative were featured with Al Roker on the Today show and other media outlets, and this initiative has been an outstanding success that we expect to continue.

Signifying our mission to power progress, our fundraising efforts continue to drive our work forward. The Department of Urology has been ranked 10th in the NIH Funding Report by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. The multi-PI U54 grant with Hampton University that I am working on with Nihal Mohamed, PhD, received an impact score of 29. The grant would be used to establish the Center for Cancer and Health Disparities Research Excellence (CAHDRE). The multi-PI R01 grant of John Sfakianos, MD, and Amir Horowitz, PhD, received an impact score of 14. The research is focused on how HLA-E and NKG2A define a novel immune checkpoint axis in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.

Continuing our Department’s long and proud history of research and national recognition, the Center of Excellence for Prostate Cancer at The Tisch Cancer Institute hosted prominent speakers such as Rakesh Jain, PhD, FACCR, A. Werk Cook Professor of Radiation Oncology, Harvard Medical School, and William Isaacs, PhD, William Thomas Gerrard, Mario Anthony Duhon and Jennifer and John Chalsty Professor of Urology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Our Vice Chair for Research, Natasha Kyprianou, PhD, served as Chair of a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Review Panel on Clinical and Translational Research, and the Terry Fox New Frontiers Program in Prostate Cancer Research in Vancouver. She was also invited to give the 22nd Annual William Scott Research Lecture at the Johns Hopkins Brady Urological Institute. In addition, Dr. Kyprianou was honored with the American Urological Association’s Richard D. Williams, MD Award for Prostate Cancer Research Excellence.

Goutam Chakraborty, PhD, a key researcher at the Department, filed for two patents as lead inventor: Method of treating cancer by administering an Akt inhibitor, and Methods for predicting responsiveness of prostate cancer patients to PARP inhibitors. He received the NYS Prostate Cancer Pilot Project Award, and his R01 grant got a priority score of 7.

The endourology fellow, Raymond Khargi, MD, received the Valentine Research Award in Urology from the New York Academy of Medicine.

The clinical faculty who joined the Department this year are Jonathan A. Khusid, MD, Michael Gorin, MD, and Osama Zaytoun, MD.

Juan Arriaga, PhD, joined the research faculty in 2022.

I firmly believe that we will continue to make significant and meaningful contributions toward building better health and improving the quality of life for our community and beyond.

Thank you for reading our Urology Specialty Report. Please reach out to me with more thoughts and questions at ash.tewari@mountsinai.org.