Bordeaux University Hospital’s Department of Urology treats the full range of urological disease on the Pellegrin site. Research here is not a parallel activity: one study in two currently running in the department is sponsored by the hospital itself rather than joined as a participating centre, and the clinical research unit works on the same floor as the wards, with about twenty full-time staff — study coordinators, research nurses, data managers, methodologists — employed by the unit itself.
Clinical activity
Three clinical teams, led by Pr Franck Bladou, Pr Grégoire Robert (head of department) and Pr Jean-Christophe Bernhard, share one operating platform: robotic, laparoscopic and endoscopic surgery, a dedicated endoscopy room, urodynamics, conventional and day-case wards, and a kidney transplantation programme with weekly multidisciplinary tumour boards.
Activity in 2025
+30 % since 2019
37 % in 2019
3.1 days in 2019
against its 2019 level
over the last five years
Department’s own figures for 2025. The same period saw admissions rise and length of stay fall — the two moving together is the point.
Two surgical robots are dedicated to urology. Every partial nephrectomy and every radical prostatectomy is performed robot-assisted, as is the great majority of cystectomies.
Alongside the eight senior urologists work six junior consultants and specialist assistants, and eight residents in training.
- Kidney surgeryPr Jean-Christophe Bernhard
- Uro-oncology — prostate, bladder and testisPr Franck Bladou · Pr Grégoire Robert
- Benign prostatic obstruction and urethral stricturePr Grégoire Robert · Dr Astrid Boulenger de Hauteclocque
- Neuro-urology and pelvic floor medicineDr Grégoire Capon
- Kidney transplantation and adrenal surgeryDr Eric Alezra
- Stone diseaseDr Vincent Estrade
- Andrology and male infertilityDr Astrid Boulenger de Hauteclocque
- Optimisation of patients’ medical careDr Peggy Blanc
Organ preservation runs through all of it: focal therapy of the prostate, partial nephrectomy assisted by 3D models and augmented reality, laser treatment of stones, minimally invasive management of benign prostatic obstruction.
Five research axes
Each axis pairs a clinical programme with a laboratory. Twenty-seven of the 55 studies — one in two — are sponsored by Bordeaux University Hospital itself: fifteen prospective trials and cohorts, twelve studies on data and samples. For half of what runs here, the question was set in this department rather than received from elsewhere.
I.CaRe — an integrated kidney cancer programme
Integrated research & innovation programme for kidney cancer, directed by Pr Jean-Christophe Bernhard with Gautier Follain, hosted as an emerging team of BRIC — Bordeaux Institute of Oncology, INSERM U1312. Four priorities: tumour diagnosis and characterisation, prognosis and prediction, innovative care pathways, and better minimally invasive surgery.
- UroCCR
Founded in 2006, now 74 centres and more than 23,000 patients, with around 14 million real-world data points, PROMs and PREMs, and a virtual biobank. Labelled by INCa (2011), referenced by the French health authority (2023), ANR clinical investigation network (2024), IBiSA (2025). More than 270 research projects have used it.
- RHU Digital Urology 3D
Coordinated by Pr Bernhard with eight academic and industrial partners, across 1,000 patients. Three strands: augmented-reality software for the surgical gesture — a kidney operation guided by augmented reality was carried out here, reported at the time as a world first; Rein3DPrint, patient-specific printed models of the tumour and its vessels, used both to plan a partial nephrectomy and to explain it to the patient; and a biomimetic kidney for surgical training.
- UroPredict
Individual prediction algorithms for the course of kidney tumours, built on the network’s data.
- UroConnect & DiPRU
Digital perioperative follow-up for patients operated on for a kidney tumour, and the medico-economic evaluation of it.
- RTC-Bx
A simulation, teaching and R&D platform for robotic surgery, founded by the University and the hospital — also open to visiting surgeons.
Treating less, and detecting better
The prostate programme works at three scales at once: the tumour, where the question is how far focal therapy can replace radical surgery; the population, where the question is whether screening actually saves lives; and the person, who has to live with the choice between two very different treatments. All three studies are sponsored by the hospital.
- EMERHIT
Treating only the diseased zone with high-intensity focused ultrasound, or removing the whole prostate: a comparison in localised cancer, T1c–T2, ages 45 to 75. Investigators: Pr Bladou, Pr Robert.
- PRIMO
Does prostate cancer screening reduce mortality? The study measures the effect of screening strategies on mortality using the French National Health Data System (SNDS), which covers the care of the entire population — a scale no trial can reach. Conducted with Inserm CIC1401, Bordeaux PharmacoEpi and Bordeaux Population Health, Inserm–University of Bordeaux U1219.
- PERCEPTHIQ
What is it like to be the one who chooses? When localised prostate cancer can be treated either by surgery or by radiotherapy, the decision is genuinely shared — and this study examines how patients experience carrying it. It is care-based research, led by an allied health professional rather than by a physician.
- Targeted biopsies
Ultrasound contrast imaging to guide prostate biopsies towards the suspicious area rather than sampling at random.
Immuno-oncology, with ImmunoConcEpT
Bladder cancer is approached here as an immunological problem. The translational work is carried out with ImmunoConcEpT — CNRS UMR 5164, Inserm ERL 1303, University of Bordeaux, a laboratory that pursues one question across several tumour types — bladder in our case, breast and lung in other teams of the unit: the immune microenvironment of the tumour, and monocyte-derived suppressor cells (HuMoSC). The department contributes the urothelial arm, and a doctoral thesis on the immune microenvironment of non-muscle-invasive bladder tumours was defended there in June 2026. Alongside it runs a portfolio of trials on what to do when BCG fails or cannot be used.
- INTerpath-011
Individualised neoantigen therapy in non-muscle-invasive disease. Cohort A (BCG-naive) has closed to recruitment and is in follow-up; cohort B remains open for carcinoma in situ in patients who cannot receive, or decline, intravesical treatment.
- ABLE-22 and ABLE-32
Intravesical gene therapy in high-risk and intermediate-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
- AFU NMIBC registry
Prospective registry of non-muscle-invasive bladder tumours.
- Further reading
Klein C, Mebroukine S, Madéry M, Moisand A, Boyer T, Larmonier N, Robert G, Domblides C. Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells in Bladder Cancer: An Emerging Target.Cells 2024;13(21):1779. The review sets out what the laboratory is after: how these cells shape immune regulation and tumour progression in bladder cancer, and how they underlie resistance to BCG and to immunotherapy.
Reading a stone with the endoscope, and with a machine
This axis rests on twenty years of work by Dr Vincent Estrade on the endoscopic recognition of stone composition — reading the surface and structure of a stone through the endoscope instead of waiting for laboratory analysis. That work contributed to the French national recommendations on stone analysis, and it produced the annotated image and video database on which everything that follows is built.
- ROCK-AI
Robust observation and classification of kidney stones: automatic recognition of stone composition from endoscopic images and video, to decide treatment and prevent recurrence. The algorithms are trained on the database built by Dr Estrade over two decades of endoscopic practice — without it, there is nothing to learn from.
- 3D ureteroscopy simulator
A simulator developed here for flexible ureteroscopy, used in training and in assessment.
Which operation, for which man, and at what cost
The three interventional studies the department runs on benign prostatic enlargement are all sponsored by the hospital itself. The questions are practical and unglamorous — which technique, for which prostate, with which consequences for continence, sexual function and cost — and they are the questions patients actually ask.
- PARTURP
Can the obstruction be relieved without destroying ejaculation? A randomised, single-blind comparison of ejaculation-preserving partial transurethral resection with complete transurethral resection, in men over 40 with a prostate of 30 to 150 cc, an IPSS of 12 or more and a peak flow at or below 15 mL/s.
- CATHETERS
Men over 50 with a prostate above 40 g, in acute retention, after a failed trial without catheter following at least 48 hours of alpha-blocker: what to do next.
- ECOLIFT
What the prostatic urethral lift costs, and what it delivers, set against the other treatments of the prostate. A health-economic evaluation — the question a health system asks before it adopts a technique, and the one a surgical trial alone never answers.
- FLOWTENSEVAL
Posterior tibial nerve stimulation in overactive bladder: a registry of how the treatment is used in real practice and what it achieves.
Publications
More than 550 references indexed in PubMed, of which 380 between 2015 and 2025 — 74 in 2025 alone, across 109 journals, 77 % in international journals. The full list, updated continuously from PubMed for each member of the team, is published on this site.
Referring a patient, or working with us
Two research teams take study enquiries, by disease area. For a scientific proposal — a multicentre protocol, a request for data, a joint application — it is usually quicker to write to the consultant who leads the theme, and to copy the research team.
- Kidney cancerPr Jean-Christophe Bernhard
- Prostate, bladder and testicular cancerPr Franck Bladou · Pr Grégoire Robert
- Benign prostatic obstruction and urethral stricturePr Grégoire Robert · Dr Astrid Boulenger de Hauteclocque
- Neuro-urology and functional disordersDr Grégoire Capon
- Stone diseaseDr Vincent Estrade
Kidney — research team
+33 5 57 82 23 94 — UroCCR network and the I.CaRe programme.
Bladder, prostate, urinary disorders — research team
+33 5 57 82 06 87 — trials in bladder and prostate cancer, benign prostatic obstruction and functional urology.
Clinical referral
Send the file by email; it is reviewed before any appointment is arranged.
One limitation, stated plainly: patients who are not covered by French health insurance cannot be included in research protocols. A referral for care is always possible; a referral made in the hope of trial inclusion is not.