The SMSNA is proud to announce and congratulate Scott Lundy, MD, PhD, for receiving the Urology Care Foundation's Research Scholars Award for 2021. Dr. Lundy's study, titled “The Role of the Seminal Microbiome in Men with Symptomatic Varicocele,” will be conducted at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation under the mentorship of Charis Eng, MD, PhD and Sarah Vij, MD. He will perform comprehensive seminal microbiome analysis in men with varicocele and compare them to paternity-proven pain-free controls to better demonstrate the association between dysbiosis and varicocele. Using machine learning, he will next identify specific microbiome characteristics which may predispose men with varicocele to developing pain, subfertility, or hypogonadism. Finally, he will assess the seminal microbiome before and after varicocelectomy and identify which preoperative microbiome features correspond to treatment success or failure. If successful, this study may identify a new paradigm underlying the pathophysiology of varicocele and explain why only a subset of men develop symptoms.
