An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the world-famous ORSI Academy in Belgium! Declan and Renu travelled to this remarkable facility just outside Ghent in Belgium, jammed full of tens of millions of dollars worth of robotic surgery technology from the world's top providers - Intuitive Surgical, Medtronic, Microport and more. Every day, surgeons from all around the world are getting hands-on experience using the latest robotic surgery technology in an array of training environments. Plus ORSI Academy hosts many academic programs, live surgery events, telesurgery demonstrations, and is actually expanding to do even more! 
We get a superb tour of the building hosted by Urologist, Dr Ruben de Groote, who also tells us about Surgquest, the digital arm of ORSI Academy, which hosts an incredible library of surgical education videos, and we also chat with ORSI Academy founder and CEO, Dr Alex Mottrie, world-renowned urologist and pioneer of robotic surgery. Plus we hear first hand from senior Urology Fellows, Dr Edoardo Beatrici, and Dr Mario de Angelis, about how the ORSI Academy proficiency-based progression training works in practice. 

This one much better enjoyed on our YouTube channel!

Links:
ORSI Academy
Surgquest 

World-renowned sexual health expert, Dr Chris Nelson, Chief of Psychology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, joins us in studio to run through the new Movember-supported "Guidelines for Sexual Health Care for Prostate Cancer Patients". A really helpful overview and structure for anyone working in this field, and for patients and their loved ones. Chris shares his 20-plus years of experience working in this field at one of the world's premier prostate cancer centres.

Even better on our YouTube channel 

Links:
Movember Sexual Health Guidelines

We recently hosted another live webinar for our Gold Partners, Mundipharma,  this time asking the question, "Is high-risk BCR actually metastatic prostate cancer??". It's a reasonable question! This podcast was anchored from the GU Cast studio in Melbourne by usual hosts, Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy, joined in person by Andrew Loblaw, radiation oncologist from Toronto, and online by medical oncologist Jeff Goh in Brisbane.

Best enjoyed on our YouTube channel if you want to check out the slides. 

Runsheet:

• Is high-risk biochemical recurrence already metastatic prostate cancer?Declan Murphy
• Is the management of high-risk BCR and mHSPC now the same? Jeffrey Goh
• Prostate radiotherapy is the real triplet therapy; plus when should we use SBRT? Andrew Loblaw

Q&A and case discussions

This webinar was organised by our Gold Partners, Mundipharma, who also support GU Cast as Gold Partners through an unrestricted educational grant.

Dr Amar Kishan (Radiation Oncologist, UCLA, USA), made lots of headlines recently when he presented data from the phase II randomised LUNAR trial of SABR +/- LuPSMA in patients with oligometastatic prostate cancer. So we were very happy when he turned up in Melbourne recently and popped into the GU Cast studio for a chat. We discuss metastasis-directed therapy and bring up our favourite Pokemet analogies, and ask should we not just be offering these patients and ADT/ARPI doublet?! 

Regular hosts Declan Murphy and Renu Eapen, also joined by Prof Wee Ong, Radiation Oncologist at Alfred Health in Melbourne. 

This is a Themed Podcast supported by our Gold Partners, Johnson & Johnson. 

Even better on our YouTube channel 

Fun today as we go to the OR to test drive some high-fidelity radical prostatectomy models and chat with the team behind UroTrainer - world leaders in urologic simulation. Urologists Gonzalo Vitagliano and Maxi Ringa join us from Buenos Aries to tell us all about UroTrainer and why they have worked hard to create these beautiful models for trainees to improve their skills in minimally-invasive prostate and kidney surgery. 

They also tell us about their range of hands-on courses around the world and their innovative remote laparoscopic training courses so trainees can do training from home while being proctored remotely. 

Declan Murphy also joins senior trainees Christa Babst and Eoin Dinneen in the OR as they test the construct validity of three prostatectomy models using a da Vinci surgical robot. These are beautiful simulation models, best in the business in our view! Well done to the UroTrainer team and keep up the good work.

Thsi one best appreciated on our YouTube channel

Links:
Urotrainer website 

One of our favourite meetings of the year! The EAU Robotic Urology Section (ERUS) Annual Meeting took place in London recently and was an unashamed exposition of robotic surgery in urology. More than 30 amazing live surgeries, and some fantastic plenary sessions focussing on technical aspects. Multiple different robots, and spectacular telesurgery with surgeons sitting in London, performing robotic surgery up to 8000km away! 

Join Host Declan Murphy to get a flavour of this year's meeting, and to hear from many of the surgeons involved.

With thanks to our Silver Partners, Device Technologies. 

This one best appreciated on our YouTube channel.

Episode 3 of our monthly GU Cast Journal Club and today we focus on one classic paper in Urology, and one from recent times - the ERSPC randomised trial of screening in prostate cancer, and the NIAGARA trial evaluating peri-operative immunotherapy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer. 

We are delighted to welcome back our GU Cast Journal Club Editors, Dr Carlos Delgado (Melbourne, AUS), and Dr Elena Berg (Munich, GER), along with main GU Cast Hosts, Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy. Watch out for Declan getting all misty-eyed recalling when the ERSPC was published back in 2009 (the rest of the team are too young to remember this)!

Links to papers below:
1. Screening and Prostate-Cancer Mortality in a Randomized European Study NEJM 2009

2. Perioperative Durvalumab with Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Operable Bladder Cancer NEJM 2024

GU Cast Journal Club is supported by our Partner, MSD, through an unrestricted educational grant.

Even better on our YouTube channel

About GU Cast Journal Club:
Each month, two papers are discussed, each of which are of importance to the GU Oncology community. These may be recent papers, or occasionally we will chose a classic landmark paper in GU Oncology
. The objective is to draw attention to important papers in GU Oncology, and critique these in a robust manner
. The key target audience is trainees working in Urology, Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Nuclear Medicine, and diagnostic specialties such as Radiology and Pathology. But any of our regular audience are likely to enjoy this Journal Club series.

Another of our deep-in-the-weeds theranostic webinars in conjunction with our friends at ProsTiC, and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. This one focussed on Terbium-161, a very exciting new option in metastatic prostate cancer. 
Your hosts are Dr Renu Eapen and Professor Michael Hofman, with Dr Howard Soule and Dr Andrea Miyahira from the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Special guests include Dr James Buteau (Peter Mac, Melbourne, Australia), Dr Alin Chirindel (Universitätsspital Basel), Prof Dr Samer Ezziddin (Saarland University Hospital, Germany) and Prof. Cristina Müller (Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland)

Is Terbium-161 superior to Lutetium-177? You'll hear about the latest clinical trials, experience and translational research from world leaders using Terbium-161.

Enjoy multi-disciplinary discussion covering nuclear medicine, radiopharmaceutical sciences, medical oncology, urology, radiation oncology, medical physics, translational sciences & industry.

Even better on our YouTube channel

Hot off the press in the Presidential Plenary at #ESMO25, we chat with Dr Scott Tagawa (Weill-Cornell, USA) about the positive data he just presented from the PSMAddition trial. This is an eagerly awaited phase III randmosied trial of patients with mHSPC, to see if the addition of six cycles of Lu-PSMA-617 to a control arm of ADT and an ARPI, could improve rPFS and other endpoints. We are also joined in the studio by Prof Michael Hofman (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, AUS), co-PI of the UpFront PSMA trial which also explored a similar concept, plus some comments from our other colleague, prof Arun Azad, who was the Discussant in the Presidential at ESMO25. 
Declan Murphy hosting GU Cast solo today while Renu Eapen was in the OR doing surgery. 

Even better on our YouTube channel

This is a Themed Podcast supported by our Silver Partners, Novartis.

Never heard of Common Sense Oncology?? Well if you enjoy this podcast then we think you will might find the Common Sense Oncology (CSO) movement to be very interesting indeed!

Declan Murphy caught up recently with Dr Bishal Gyawali, Medical Oncologist at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, to talk about CSO which he co-founded in 2023. They are on a mission to ensure that cancer care and innovation, should focus on results that are meaningful to patients (eg survival, quality of life, equity), rather than just regulatory approval, commercial success, or statistical endpoints. "Outcomes that matter", is their battle cry.

They are also very focussed on communication, and are quick to call out when stakeholders make ridiculous claims for their product or innovation. And Bishal happens to be one of the very best communicators out there. Great to have him on GU Cast and we at GU Cast are 100% supportive of their mission.

You can visit their website and join the movement for all the latest updates