Self-insertion of an odd urethral foreign body that led to Fournier's gangrene.

Self-inserted urethral foreign bodies (FBs) are rare. Neither reported case was the self-inflicted FB due to a lack of financial resources nor was either case complicated by Fournier's gangrene. We present a 54-year-old male who inserted a household pipe to relieve his urine retention.

Giant Prostatic Hyperplasia: Fourth largest prostate reported in medical literature.

A giant prostatic hyperplasia (GPH) weighing more than 700 g is a rare entity. It is believed that only eight such cases have been previously reported in the medical literature. This case report concerns a patient with a GPH weighing 740 g which was successfully removed by suprapubic prostatectomy.

Quantitative high throughput endothelial cell migration and invasion assay system.

We have developed a novel assay system combining fluorescent signal-blocking microporous PET membrane inserts and ECM to study dynamic endothelial cell migration and invasion. The assay described here may be applicable to other cell types for analogous assay. The currently used method for analyzing migration and invasion requires the removal of nonmigratory cells from the top of a clear microporous membrane.

Osteogenic protein-1 (bone morphogenetic protein-7) reduces severity of injury after ischemic acute renal failure in rat.

We have shown that osteogenic protein-1 (OP-1) (bone morphogenetic protein-7) is responsible for the induction of nephrogenic mesenchyme during embryonic kidney development. Gene knock-out studies showed that OP-1 null mutant mice die of renal failure within the first day of postnatal life. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of recombinant human OP-1 for the treatment of acute renal failure after 60 min bilateral renal artery occlusion in rats.

Osteogenic protein-1 (BMP-7) inhibits cell proliferation and stimulates the expression of markers characteristic of osteoblast phenotype in rat osteosarcoma (17/2.8) cells.

We recently showed that osteogenic protein-1(OP-1), a bone morphogenetic protein member of TGF-beta superfamily, induces endochondral bone formation in vivo, and stimulates growth and differentiation of osteoblasts in rat calvarial-derived cell cultures. In the present study, we examined the effect of OP-1 on cell growth and expression of markers that are characteristic of osteoblast phenotype using the clonal rat osteosarcoma cells (ROS 17/2.8).