Publications by authors named "David G Ortega"

The Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has emerged as a ground-breaking immunotherapeutic approach in cancer treatment. To overcome the complexity and high manufacturing cost associated with current ex vivo CAR T cell therapy products, alternative strategies to produce CAR T cells directly in the body have been developed in recent years. These strategies involve the direct infusion of CAR genes via engineered nanocarriers or viral vectors to generate CAR T cells in situ.

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Objective: To report our experience and outcomes using a novel robotic technique for the simultaneous repair of rectovesical fistula (RVF) with vesicourethral anastomotic stricture (VUAS) after radical prostatectomy (RP).

Methods: Between 2019 and 2021, four consecutive patients who underwent robotic-assisted simultaneous repair of RVF with concurrent VUAS after RP were retrospectively reviewed. Baseline characteristics and perioperative outcomes were examined and reported.

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Cowper's gland syringocele (CGS) is the cystic dilation of its duct. It is an uncommon urological condition and is thought to be more commonly encountered in pediatric urology. However, it is in adults that CGS poses a diagnostic challenge because of its "chameleon-like" clinical presentation that may masquerade multiple urological etiologies.

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The aim of this study is to report our experience in minimally invasive management of rectovesical fistulae (RVFs). Between 2004 and 2021, 24 patients who underwent minimally invasive RVF repair by a single surgeon at 3 international institutions were retrospectively reviewed. Baseline demographic characteristics and perioperative and postoperative variables were collected.

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Objective: To report our experience and outcomes in minimally invasive management of rectourethral fistula (RUF).

Methods: From 2004 to 2021, 15 patients who underwent minimally invasive RUF repair by a single surgeon at 2 international institutions were retrospectively reviewed. Baseline demographic characteristics, perioperative, and postoperative data were collected.

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Emerging single-cell technologies provide high-resolution measurements of distinct cellular modalities opening new avenues for generating detailed cellular atlases of many and diverse tissues. The high dimensionality, sparsity, and inaccuracy of single cell sequencing measurements, however, can obscure discriminatory information, mask cellular subtype variations and complicate downstream analyses which can limit our understanding of cell function and tissue heterogeneity. Here, we present a novel pre-processing method (scPSD) inspired by power spectral density analysis that enhances the accuracy for cell subtype separation from large-scale single-cell omics data.

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Complete testicular epididymal dissociations are exceedingly rare conditions where the epididymis and the vas deferens are completely dissociated from the testicle. We present the case of a 46-year-old male with a history of chronic, intermittent and severe left testicular pain who was found to have a complete testicular epididymal dissociation at the time of surgical exploration and bilateral orchidopexy. Microsurgical approximation of the tail of the epididymis to the tunica albuginea of the testis with reapproximating the muscularis of the spermatic cord to the epididymal appendage was performed with subsequent relief of symptoms.

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Sensitive and quantitative detection of molecular biomarkers is crucial for the early diagnosis of diseases like metabolic syndrome and cancer. Here we present a single-molecule sandwich immunoassay by imaging the number of single nanoparticles to diagnose aggressive prostate cancer. Our assay employed the photo-stable upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) as labels to detect the four types of circulating antigens in blood circulation, including glypican-1 (GPC-1), leptin, osteopontin (OPN), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), as their serum concentrations indicate aggressive prostate cancer.

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