SUMMARY
Dr. Humphreys has been involved with many areas of clinical and outcomes based research. His three main areas of research interest are currently:
-
Urologic malignancy and innovative minimally invasive surgical procedures and technology to improve treatments and outcomes
-
Nephrolithiais basic sciences to look at stone risk modifiers and methods of influencing stone disease
-
Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and associated genetic markers that can predict surgical outcomes, or provide molecular targets for future intervention as well as clinical outcome initiatives to maximize quality of life and functional results with novel laser treatments.
Natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) is the forefront of minimally invasive surgery, or operating without incisions. Dr. Humphreys and colleagues pioneered the first such procedure for prostate cancer known as the NOTES RP and have been performing it clinically in carefully selected patients.
Other research initiatives include the application of new technology and imaging to better diagnose and treat urologic malignancies.
Kidney stone disease has a major impact on health care cost in the United States. Dr. Humphreys has been part of multi-institutional NIH awarded group studies to look into the pathogenesis and treatment of stone disease.
He is a founding member of a new international consortium that has pooled their resources to answer relevant clinical and basic science questions that would otherwise be nearly impossible to answer.
Based on understanding and experience with many of the latest surgical laser therapies for BPH, Dr. Humphreys' research interest have grown as well. Building on outcomes data from a unique prospectively maintained surgical therapy database, his research has focused on quality of life and functional outcomes.
It has grown to recently include the prospective collection of tissue, serum and urine as a biospecimen data bank to support future research initiatives. He has also been working with immunochemical tissue staining and genetic markers for predictors of symptomatic BPH in an effort to identify cellular and signaling targets that could represent an opportunity for early invention and therapeutic targeting or prevention.