ROCHESTER, Minn. — Drugs that selectively kill senescent cells may benefit otherwise healthy older women but are not a "one-size-fits-all" remedy, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Specifically, these drugs may only benefit people with a high number of senescent cells, according to findings published today in Nature Medicine.

Senescent cells are malfunctioning cells in the body that lapse into a state of dormancy. These cells, also known as "zombie cells," can't divide but can drive chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction linked to aging and chronic diseases. Senolytic drugs clear tissues of senescent cells.

In the 20-week, phase 2 randomized controlled trial, 60 healthy women past menopause intermittently received a senolytic combination composed of FDA-approved dasatinib and quercetin, a natural product found in some foods. It is the first randomized controlled trial of intermittent senolytic treatment in healthy aging women, and the investigators used bone metabolism as a marker for efficacy.

Researchers found that this combination, known as D+Q, had beneficial effects on bone formation but did not reduce bone resorption or the breakdown and removal of bone tissue. Furthermore, D+Q mainly benefited people with evidence of a high number of senescent cells. This group had more robust increases in bone formation, decreases in bone resorption, and an increase in bone mineral density at the wrist.

"Our findings argue against what many people are already doing — using commercial products like quercetin or related compounds like fisetin that may show some senolytic properties," says senior author Sundeep Khosla, M.D., an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "They're using them as anti-aging agents without knowing if they have high enough senescent cell numbers to benefit, or what dose or dosing regimen is needed to be effective yet safe."

Dr. Khosla says more research is needed to better identify people who may benefit from senolytic treatments and to develop more specific and potent senolytic drugs that may show efficacy in more people. People who have experienced "accelerated aging" -- such as cancer survivors after chemotherapy, or those with progeroid syndromes – may have increased numbers of senescent cells.

Besides their application to aging, senolytic drugs may be useful against certain diseases, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, dementia, diabetes, heart disease and others, Dr. Khosla says. However, these drugs will likely need to be customized according to their potency and the amounts of senescent cells in the diseased tissues.

The study was supported by National Institutes of Health grant nos. R21 AG065868, P01 AG062413, R01 AG 076515, R01 DK128552, R01 AG055529, R37 AG13925 and R33 AG61456.

Co-authors are Joshua Farr, Ph.D., Elizabeth Atkinson, Sara Achenbach, Tammie Volkman, Amanda Tweed, Stephanie Vos, Ming Ruan, Jad Sfeir, M.D., Matthew Drake, M.D., Ph.D., Dominik Saul, M.D., Madison Doolittle, Ph.D., Irina Bancos, M.D., Kai Yu, M.D., Tamara Tchkonia, Ph.D., Nathan LeBrasseur, Ph.D., James Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D., and David Monroe, Ph.D.

Drs. LeBrasseur, Tchkonia and Kirkland have financial interests related to this research, including Mayo Clinic patents and pending patents covering senolytic drugs and their uses. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

Media contact:

• Rhoda Madson, Mayo Clinic Communications, newsbureau@mayo.edu

The post Drugs that kill “zombie” cells may benefit some older women, but not all, Mayo Clinic study finds appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Every year, about 4 million gynecologic surgeries are performed in the U.S. Among these, hysterectomies are the most common, with over half a million procedures done annually, excluding those related to childbirth. 

Dr. Megan Wasson, a gynecologic surgeon who specializes in minimally invasive procedures at Mayo Clinic, says it's a priority to help patients in their recovery from surgery so they can get back to their lives as quickly as possible.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (1:09) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.

"The biggest question I get is, 'When can I get back to life after surgery?' A lot of the patients that we care for have families and have jobs, and responsibilities outside of their own health," says Dr. Wasson.

Medical advancements help recovery from surgery

Balancing self-care and caring for others can be tough for patients. Quicker recovery time due to surgical advancements has helped.

"The advances that we've had in technology when it comes to surgical procedures have really pushed the envelope and allowed us to do the majority of gynecologic procedures through a minimally invasive approach," Dr. Wasson says.

Downtime as you recover from surgery can be a day or weeks, depending on the type of procedure. 

"But we do want normal physical activity to start even the day of surgery because that really helps maintain strength. It helps maintain normal body function, helps speed along the recovery," says Dr. Wasson.

Preparing for surgery

Recovery also can depend on preparation. Go in as healthy as you can be.

"The less stress you have, the better your diet is, the more rests that you've been getting, the more exercise — that's going to support your body for the stress of surgery, which in turn is going to help speed along the recovery," she says.

And, finally, Dr. Wasson says don't be afraid to ask for a helping hand.

"After surgery, be prepared for needing a little bit of help, needing a little bit of assistance until the pain and the fatigue lifts," she says. "It's very normal to need a little bit of help, and you just want to be prepared for that."

Related posts:

• Mayo Clinic Minute: When to seek care for pelvic pain
• Mayo Clinic Minute: When surgery for endometriosis is the answer
• Mayo Clinic Minute: Nonsurgical treatment for uterine fibroid

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ROCHESTER, Minn. — A generous $20 million gift from Dwight and Dian Diercks will fuel key elements of Mayo Clinic’s vision for the future of healthcare, including Mayo Clinic Platform and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for early detection and intervention in cancer. In honor of their support, Mayo Clinic will establish the Dwight and Dian Diercks President, Mayo Clinic Platform, and create the Heidi Diercks Krause Fund in AI Innovation for Cancer, named in honor of Mr. Diercks’ late sister.

"The Dierckses’ visionary investment will bolster Mayo Clinic’s efforts through the Platform to curate the world's de-identified data, empower solution developers and transform healthcare around the world," says John Halamka, M.D., the inaugural Dwight and Dian Diercks President, Mayo Clinic Platform.

“Through the reach of Mayo Clinic Platform, the Dierckses’ remarkable generosity will accelerate new innovations that fundamentally change how health systems and care teams provide care to improve patients' lives,” says Dr. Halamka, who also holds the Michael D. Brennan, M.D., President’s Strategic Initiative Professorship.

Mayo Clinic Platform is a key focus of Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. strategy to transform healthcare globally. Disrupting the traditional pipeline paradigm, Mayo Clinic Platform brings together solution developers, data partners and healthcare organizations to collaborate around secure, de-identified clinical data to create, validate and scale digital health solutions. It currently offers access to a diverse dataset of 46 million de-identified and longitudinal patient records, AI model validation for accuracy and removal of bias, and streamlined clinical integration. This transformative model is expediting a new era of revolutionary diagnostics and treatments that redefine the frontiers of patient care and well-being.

The Heidi Diercks Krause Fund in AI Innovation for Cancer will enable Mayo Clinic’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Program and Mayo Clinic’s Comprehensive Cancer Center to advance answers for cancer. An example of this work includes developing advanced generative AI tools to gain deep insights into a person’s risk of developing cancer. This forecasting will allow clinicians to intervene earlier than ever before — even before cancer can be diagnosed.

“We are profoundly grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Diercks for their support, which will help us bring the promise of AI to patients at the earliest phases of their care journeys,” says Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic’s medical director for Strategy, chair of Radiology in Rochester and leader of the Generative Artificial Intelligence Program. “Cancer affects people from all walks of life, and leveraging AI to tackle and treat this devastating disease will be critical for improving outcomes for all patients.”

As senior vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA, Mr. Diercks has been involved in AI innovation since the company’s inception.

“We can't afford to wait years or decades for new AI breakthroughs in healthcare. People need new therapies and cures now,” says Mr. Diercks. “Dian and I truly believe that Mayo Clinic Platform and AI innovation will be the keys to better predicting diseases like cancer, so physicians can intervene sooner with more effective treatments that save, extend or improve the quality of patient lives. It gives me comfort knowing my sister’s legacy will live on through these efforts to transform cancer care for everyone. Heidi lived for her family, and having additional time with her husband, Scott, and daughter, Kate, meant the world to her. In the future, we hope that extension of time can be amplified tenfold for others.”

Mr. Diercks grew up in Red Wing, Minnesota, less than 50 miles from Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus, where he worked on his family’s farm as a teenager. His close family, including his late father and sister, trusted Mayo Clinic for their most complex health needs.

“I tell my friends that receiving care at Mayo Clinic is like being at the intersection of medicine and hardcore engineering. Everyone is focused on finding the right tests and data to solve the most personal, important health challenges in your life,” says Mr. Diercks. 

Mr. Diercks earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering with a minor in business from the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). The Dierckses have provided transformational support to MSOE that has resulted in a nation-leading computer science program in applied AI and supercomputing. With their latest gift to Mayo Clinic, they aim to provide the same accelerant to AI innovation, now within healthcare.

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About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

About Mayo Clinic Platform
Founded on Mayo Clinic's dedication to patient-centered care, Mayo Clinic Platform enables new knowledge, new solutions and new technologies through collaborations with health technology innovators to create a healthier world. To learn more, visit Mayo Clinic Platform at www.mayoclinicplatform.org.

About Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center
Designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute, Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center is defining new boundaries in possibility, focusing on patient-centered care, developing novel treatments, training future generations of cancer experts and bringing cancer research to communities. At Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, a culture of innovation and collaboration is driving research breakthroughs that are changing approaches to cancer prevention, screening and treatment, and improving the lives of cancer survivors.

Media contact:

• Terri Malloy, Mayo Clinic Communications, newsbureau@mayo.edu

The post $20 million gift from Dwight and Dian Diercks to accelerate Mayo Clinic’s strategy for transformational healthcare AI and innovation appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

How does it feel for a patient to see her tumor in 3D form, or for another to hold his heart in his hands? Find out how 3D printing is used to provide a new and innovative perspective on medicine in a new Tomorrow's Cure podcast episode.

Featured experts on this week's episode include Dr. Jonathan Morris, a diagnostic radiologist at Mayo Clinic, and Dr. Beth Ripley from the Veterans Health Administration's Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning.

"One of the most impactful things we're doing with 3D printing in healthcare is bringing patients imaging anatomy back into the three-dimensional space, so a patient may walk into their surgeon's office and be faced with the opportunity to hold their own heart, their own kidney, their own blood vessel in their hand, and to be able to really look at the anatomy and understand what is wrong, what needs to be fixed, how they're going to do it and why," says Dr. Ripley.

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a 3D model is worth a thousand pictures," says Dr. Morris.

"Tomorrow's Cure," is a podcast that will highlight medical innovations transforming healthcare and feature the visionaries who make them possible. The podcast is free on all significant on-demand audio platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Episodes also will feature a video component, which can be viewed on Mayo Clinic's YouTube channel.

The first season comprises eight episodes, with seasons 2 and 3 set to resume in early 2025. To learn more and to see the complete list of episode topics and featured experts, visit tomorrowscure.com.

Learn more on this topic:

• 3D bioprinting:  transforming medical images into human tissue
• Mayo Clinic’s 3D printing operations growing, changing medicine along the way
• Mayo Clinic Minute: Using 3D-printed, digital models for brain surgery

The post Tomorrow’s Cure: How 3D printing is used in medicine appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

The free podcast, hosted by Cathy Wurzer, features visionaries from across the field of medicine

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic is launching "Tomorrow's Cure," a new podcast that will highlight medical innovations transforming healthcare and feature the visionaries who make them possible.

"Tomorrow's Cure" is brought to listeners in collaboration with PRX, a Pulitzer and Peabody Award-winning public media organization and one of the world's top podcast distributors.

Key Details:

Release date: "Tomorrow's Cure" debuts on June 26.

Frequency: New episodes will be released weekly on Wednesdays.

Seasons: The first season comprises eight episodes, with seasons two and three set to resume in early 2025.

How to listen: The podcast is free on all significant on-demand audio platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Episodes will also feature a video component, which can be viewed on Mayo Clinic's YouTube channel.

"This is an exciting new initiative for Mayo Clinic," says Molly Biwer, chair of Brand Strategy, Mayo Clinic. "'Tomorrow's Cure' will explore the cutting-edge research, technology and breakthroughs that are revolutionizing the future of medicine. We are excited to showcase the physicians, clinicians, researchers and thought leaders driving these transformative advancements."

"Mayo Clinic is the trusted resource on what impacts us all: our health," says Jason Saldanha, chief operating officer at PRX. "We're proud to collaborate with the team to help bring listeners everywhere their expertise, innovation and commitment to opening the possibilities of medicine."

The show is hosted by Cathy Wurzer, a renowned broadcaster, journalist and author known for her work on Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Edition and Twin Cities PBS. Wurzer will conduct in-depth interviews with experts from Mayo Clinic and industry leaders. The episodes will emphasize the importance of collaboration in driving innovation and inspiring possibilities. Through her engaging storytelling, Cathy will distill complex topics into meaningful lessons and takeaways.

"Tomorrow's Cure" will cover various topics such as 3D printing models, artificial intelligence, mixed reality and personalized medicine. Guests will include Jonathan Morris, M.D., radiologist, Mayo Clinic; Beth Ripley, M.D., Ph.D., deputy chief, Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Konstantinos Lazaridis, M.D., gastroenterologist and Carlson and Nelson Endowed Executive Director, Center for Individualized Medicine, Mayo Clinic; Gary Miller, Ph.D., vice dean of Research Strategy and Innovation, director of the Exposomics Laboratory and Core, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; and more.

To learn more and to see the complete list of episode topics and featured experts, visit tomorrowscure.com.

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About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

About PRX
Celebrating more than 20 years as a nonprofit public media company, PRX works in partnership with leading independent creators, organizations, and stations to bring meaningful audio storytelling into millions of listeners' lives. PRX is one of the world's top podcast publishers, public radio distributors, and audio producers, serving as an engine of innovation for public media and podcasting to help shape a vibrant future for creative and journalistic audio. Shows across PRX's portfolio of broadcast productions, podcast partners, and its Radiotopia podcast network have received recognition from the Peabody Awards, the Tribeca Festival, the International Documentary Association, and more, including in 2022 when Futuro Media and PRX won a Pulitzer Prize. Visit PRX.org for more.

Media contact:

• Kelley Luckstein, Mayo Clinic Communications, newsbureau@mayo.edu

The post Mayo Clinic launches ‘Tomorrow’s Cure’ podcast to spotlight medical innovations transforming healthcare appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

PlatforMed, the annual conference on platform transformation in healthcare, underscored the importance of a collaborative approach to healthcare innovation to create a world where everyone, everywhere has access to the best possible care.

More than 250 global leaders in technology and healthcare gathered June 4-5 in Phoenix for PlatforMed 2024. Healthcare leaders, industry experts, policymakers, investors, and startups shared new insights and discussed the future of healthcare.

The event opened with a welcome address from John Halamka, M.D., president of Mayo Clinic Platform, followed by a keynote from Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic.

"Platforms represent our greatest opportunity to bring real, lasting, and transformative change to our global healthcare system," Dr. Farrugia said. "Through a platform approach to healthcare, we are seeing real, scalable solutions for long-standing and emerging problems."

Headline speakers included Lana Feng, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Huma.ai, who shared insights on the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Jennifer Goldsack, CEO and founder of Digital Medicine Society, spoke about the promise and power at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare to serve patient needs.

Maneesh Goyal, chief operating officer of Mayo Clinic Platform, focused on how platform-based collaboration is creating a world where the best possible care will be available to everyone, everywhere. Headliner Victoria Lee, M.D., president and CEO of Fraser Health, explored how platforms are helping to transform "sickness care" into "wellness care."

During the Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate Showcase, digital health startups shared practical applications of AI-based technologies developed through the accelerator program, including solutions that support care teams by using millions of de-identified patient records to predict life-threatening complications such as sepsis and preeclampsia.

Key takeaways

The conference focused on opportunities and challenges surrounding platform transformation. Topics discussed include the need for industry collaboration, AI safety and security, and the importance of human connection. Speakers also emphasized how digital tools and AI support staff. 

Several themes echoed across the conference sessions:

• Healthcare's most pressing challenges require platform thinking and industry-wide collaboration.
  Fundamental challenges in healthcare include too much disease, increasing demand, and uneven quality across communities and countries. The industry needs easier ways to collaborate to create more cures, provide even more support to staff and make quality care more accessible.
  
  
• Healthcare needs change — and platform thinking.
  The World Health Organization estimates that there will be a shortfall of 10 million health workers by 2030. Platform thinking and emerging technologies will support the work that only healthcare workers can do, ensuring that, as demand increases, the quality of care can stay consistent. Healthcare must change, and platforms present the best opportunity to support that change.
  
  
• Trust is essential for transformation.
  Healthcare professionals will only adopt AI-based solutions they can trust. AI solutions need to be mitigated for bias and validated by experts. Validation frameworks, like the ones developed by Mayo Clinic Platform_Validate, provide the evidence to establish the trustworthiness of solutions that can help teams enhance operational efficiency and improve patient care.
  
  
• Mayo Clinic Platform is the model and conduit for global healthcare transformation.
  A platform model of healthcare can and will be one of Mayo Clinic's most transformative and far-reaching contributions to the future of healthcare. Industry partnerships and platform thinking will support staff and bring high-quality, personalized medicine to people everywhere — at Mayo Clinic and beyond.

The conference concluded with closing remarks from Dr. Halamka, who emphasized the importance of human connection and collaboration and encouraged the audience to reflect on the possibilities for the future of care.

"If we can start collectively delivering the care journeys and care-path planning that our patients need and want, reducing the burden on our caregivers and empowering the next generation that is not going to have enough resources, then we are finally going to change the practice of medicine," he said. "The only way to do it is with platform thinking — and the only way to do it is together."

Next year global leaders across the healthcare ecosystem will convene once again for PlatforMed 2025, advancing platforms for a better and fairer model of healthcare for all.

The post 4 takeaways from PlatforMed 2024 to advance collaboration, transformation in healthcare with platform thinking appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Researchers discover new molecular drug targets for progressive neurological disorder

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is an uncurable brain disorder marked by walking and balance difficulties. Its symptoms mimic Parkinson's disease and dementia. Mayo researchers and collaborators have outlined new therapeutic targets that may lead to future treatments for PSP as well as Alzheimer's disease and related disorders.

"This research enhances our understanding of progressive supranuclear palsy and other related, incurable neurological disorders," says the study's senior author, Nilufer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist and neuroscientist. "Moving forward, we can target these specific genes or others that are biologically related to them to develop a potential treatment for this untreatable disease."

Mapping cell behaviors in high-grade glioma to improve treatment

High-grade gliomas are cancerous tumors that spread quickly in the brain or spinal cord. Mayo Clinic researchers found invasive brain tumor margins of high-grade glioma contain biologically distinct genetic and molecular alterations that indicate aggressive behavior and disease recurrence. They also found that MRI techniques, such as dynamic susceptibility contrast and diffusion tensor imaging, can help distinguish between the genetic and molecular alterations of invasive tumors, which is important for clinically characterizing areas that are difficult to surgically biopsy.

"We need to understand what is driving tumor progression," says lead author Leland Hu, M.D., a neuroradiologist at Mayo Clinic. "Our results demonstrate an expanded role of advanced MRI for clinical decision-making for high-grade glioma."

Researchers identify new criteria to detect rapidly progressive dementia

Rapidly progressive dementia (RPD) is caused by several disorders that quickly impair intellectual functioning and interfere with normal activities and relationships. If patients' symptoms appear suddenly causing rapid decline, a physician may diagnose RPD. These patients can progress from initial symptoms of dementia to complete incapacitation, requiring full-time care, in less than two years. Mayo Clinic researchers have identified new scoring criteria allowing for the detection of treatable forms of RPD with reasonably high confidence during a patient's first clinical visit. This scoring criteria may allow physicians to substantially reduce the time it takes to begin treatment. 

"Many conditions that cause rapidly progressive dementia can be treated and even reversed. We found that more than half of the patients in our study with rapidly progressive dementia had a treatable underlying condition. We may be able to identify many of these patients early in the symptomatic course by intentionally searching for key clinical symptoms and exam findings and integrating these with results of a brain MRI and spinal tap," says the study's senior author, Gregg Day, M.D., a clinical researcher at Mayo Clinic.

Global consortium to study Pick’s disease, rare form of early-onset dementia

Pick's disease, a neurodegenerative disease of unknown genetic origin, is a rare type of frontotemporal dementia that affects people under the age of 65. The condition causes changes in personality, behavior and sometimes language impairment. In patients with the disease, tau proteins build up and form abnormal clumps called Pick bodies, which restrict nutrients to the brain and cause neurodegeneration. Researchers at Mayo Clinic and collaborators worldwide have established the Pick's Disease International Consortium to study a specific MAPT gene variation known as MAPT H2 that makes the tau protein and acts as a driver of disease. They investigated a connection between the gene and disease risk, age at onset and duration of Pick's disease. 

"We found that the MAPT H2 genetic variant is associated with an increased risk of Pick's disease in people of European descent," says Owen Ross, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neuroscientist and senior author of the paper. "We were only able to determine that because of the global consortium, which greatly increased the sample size of pathology cases to study Pick's disease."

Moments of clarity in the fog of dementia

Researchers define lucid episodes as unexpected, spontaneous, meaningful and relevant communication from a person who is assumed to have permanently lost the capacity for coherent interactions, either verbally or through gestures and actions. A study surveyed family caregivers of people living with dementia and asked them about witnessing lucid episodes. 

"We have found in our research and stories from caregivers that these kinds of episodes change how they interact with and support their loved ones — usually for the better," says lead author Joan Griffin, Ph.D. "These episodes can serve as reminders that caregiving is challenging, but we can always try to care with a little more humanity and grace."

Untangling the threads of early-onset dementia

Changes in personality, behavior and language are hallmarks of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the most common form of dementia in patients under the age of 65. New research provides insight into the role a specific gene and the protein it produces play in the development and progression of FTD, which is associated with degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. The researchers think the key may lie in the formation of fibrils, or tiny fiber-like structures produced by part of this protein, that sometimes get tangled up in the brain.

"We also think that these fibrils could one day serve as biomarkers to help clinicians determine FTD prognosis or severity, " says Jordan Marks, an M.D.–Ph.D. student with the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

Mayo Clinic researchers' new tool links Alzheimer's disease types to rate of cognitive decline

Through a new corticolimbic index tool that identifies changes in specific areas of the brain, Mayo Clinic researchers discovered a series of brain changes characterized by unique clinical features and immune cell behaviors for Alzheimer's disease, a leading cause of dementia.

"By combining our expertise in the fields of neuropathology, biostatistics, neuroscience, neuroimaging and neurology to address Alzheimer's disease from all angles, we've made significant strides in understanding how it affects the brain," says Melissa E. Murray, Ph.D., a translational neuropathologist at Mayo Clinic. "The corticolimbic index is a score that could encourage a paradigm shift toward understanding the individuality of this complex disease and broaden our perspective. This study marks a significant step toward personalized care, offering hope for more effective future therapies."

New research platform assesses brain cancer mutations during surgery

Brain cancer is difficult to treat when it starts growing, and a prevalent type, known as a glioma, has a poor five-year survival rate. Mayo Clinic researchers report on a new surgical platform used during surgery that informs critical decision-making about tumor treatment within minutes. Time is of the utmost importance when dealing with aggressive malignant tumors.

The researchers say that, in addition to enabling real-time diagnosis, the platform allows surgeons to determine a patient's prognosis and perform tumor resection to improve patient outcomes.

“We will be able to bring the fight against cancer to the operating room, before chemotherapy and radiation treatments begin, and before the disease has progressed and invaded further," says the study's senior author, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, M.D.

The post 8 innovations in neuroscience and brain research at Mayo Clinic appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Mayo Clinic will hold its 2024 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit, "Generative Multimodal AI — Potentials and Challenges," on July 8–9 in Rochester and virtually. The event will bring together AI experts and the healthcare community to discuss advances in large multimodal models and their use in healthcare.

"The role of artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly in areas from preventing and diagnosing diseases to developing new cures," says Cui Tao, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Informatics. "The summit is an exciting opportunity to explore the possibilities while navigating the challenges of developing and using transformative technology in healthcare." Dr. Tao is the Nancy Peretsman and Robert Scully Chair of AI and Informatics.

The event will be hosted by the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Analytics, in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic AI community.

Event details

The AI Summit will offer opportunities to hear from experts in AI, share knowledge and network through lightning talks, panel discussions and a poster session.

The keynote speakers will be:

• John Halamka, M.D., president, Mayo Clinic Platform
  "The Next Milestones for Predictive and Generative AI in Healthcare"
• Thomas Fuchs, DrSc, dean of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, Mount Sinai
  "Beyond 1 Million Slides: How the Era of Foundation Models is Supercharging Precision Medicine"
• Anant Madabhushi, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering, Emory University
  "Walking the Talk: Validating AI for Precision Medicine with Clinical Trials"
• Shauna Overgaard, Ph.D., co-director of AI Validation and Stewardship, Mayo Clinic
  "Implementing Quality Management Systems to Close the AI Translation Gap and Facilitate Safe, Ethical and Effective Health AI Solutions"
• Hoifung Poon, general manager at Health Futures, Microsoft Research
  "The Emergence of Multimodal Generative AI in Biomedicine"

Hamid Tizhoosh, Ph.D., Artificial Intelligence and Informatics, will chair the event.

View the complete agenda.

Register to attend, submit an abstract

Registration for both Mayo Clinic and external participants is $350 for in-person or virtual attendance, with a discounted rate of $250 for students.

Register today to attend.

You can submit your work in an AI-related area for consideration to present at the summit. The conference will cover an array of topics — AI models and algorithms in general, generative AI, discovery science, bias, multimodality and more.

Three presentation formats are available:

• Lightning talk (10 minutes)
• Poster presentation
• Workshop/tutorial

Learn more and submit an abstract proposal on the conference website. Proposals will be accepted through June 9 (extended deadline).

Learn more

For more details, visit the AI Summit website.

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Clinical trials can be a beacon of hope for many patients and can fuel the discovery of new advancements in healthcare. They represent the power of collaboration between volunteer participants and research teams who carefully collect data.

One clinical trials team at Mayo Clinic is working to test a screening tool for colorectal cancer, a leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.

Early detection of colorectal cancer may hold the key to saving lives.

In the Voyage study, the team is gathering real-world data on Cologuard, a noninvasive stool DNA screening test for colorectal cancer, and now has 150,000 participants enrolled. The participants will be tracked over a seven-year period.

The team conducting this study includes data librarians, statisticians and clinical research coordinators, who ensure the research is thorough and conducted responsibly. The team has worked in lockstep throughout the trial, now in its fifth year.

"The purpose of this study is to gather real-world evidence on Cologuard's impact on long-term outcomes in a large, diverse population, and so the overarching goal is to examine the colorectal cancer-related incidence and mortality in a cohort of people who had an order for the test kit," says clinical research coordinator Allison Berry.

"It is a prospective survey-based study, so we're looking at people going forward in time," she adds.

The participants enrolled in the study answered a baseline questionnaire about demographics and their health history. From there, Berry says, the team is building a data repository that documents any changes in their health or personal information over time.

Labor of love

The team notes that this study is a labor of love.

"People send us notes all the time; one person said they are doing this because their mother passed away, and they do not want anyone to go through this pain," says Berry. "I think just seeing the care, attention and investment that participants have makes our job rewarding."

The team notes that the work being conducted today within the study has implications for now and well into the future when it comes to those considering preventive measures such as early screening for colorectal cancer. They hope the data points they are collecting will provide lifesaving information and result in positive outcomes for patients.

"We're not just collecting data and keeping it," says clinical research coordinator Angie Kostreba. "We're concentrating on following up and continuing to validate what the participants have reported by checking in with their healthcare providers."

Senior program coordinator Jessica O’Neill emphasized that the effort put into the details of the clinical trial makes all the difference.

"When people hear about survey studies, they don't realize how much work goes into it," says O'Neill. "The research coordinators have fielded over 24,000 phone calls, 6,000 voicemails, 10,000 emails, 500,000 incoming documents and one million mailed outgoing documents."

The clinical research coordinators are critical to the work, their colleagues say. 

"The clinical research coordinators have played a hugely important role in the success of the Voyage study,” says Janet Olson, Ph.D., the study's principal investigator. "As advocates for the study and the participants, the study coordinator team has been well prepared to ensure that all tasks were done with quality and integrity and that participants received timely responses to their inquiries about the study."

Members say that flexibility and cohesive team dynamics also are key to ensuring the study's success.

"We would not be here without everyone who helped get us to this point," says clinical research coordinator Jen Fondakowski. "We've been lucky to have such a phenomenal team for many years."

Mayo Clinic has a financial interest in the technology referenced in this news article. Mayo Clinic will use any revenue it receives to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.

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Decades of data can now be used to pinpoint diseases earlier and transform healthcare.

ROCHESTER, Minn. and ST. LOUIS — Mayo Clinic and Mercy are making a significant advancement in their global, first-of-its-kind 10-year collaboration agreement signed in the summer of 2022. As founding members of Mayo Clinic Platform_Connect, the two organizations will now be working together to analyze de-identified patient data as they search for new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease, providing better outcomes and lower costs of care.

Mayo Clinic Platform_Connect is a distributed data network that provides secure access to de-identified clinical data. Previously, Mercy and Mayo Clinic could use Connect to analyze data from their own organizations, but as of today, each organization can safely and securely analyze de-identified patient data from either health system. This significantly larger data set allows researchers and innovators to better identify risk factors, predict illnesses and provide earlier treatment with the potential to positively impact millions of patients' lives. 

"Mayo Clinic Platform is enabling innovation to change how care is provided. At its core, Platform relies on our distributed data network to make available data that has depth, breadth and spread, and which can help create new ways to diagnose, treat and care for patients no matter where in the world they might live. Today represents a significant milestone, demonstrating the power of collaboration in transforming healthcare," said John Halamka, M.D., president of Mayo Clinic Platform.

Mayo Clinic Platform recently announced the addition of three healthcare organizations to its global collaboration: Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea, Singapore's SingHealth and UC Davis Health in California. This expansion brings the total number of Mayo Clinic Platform_Connect members to eight, including founding members Mayo Clinic and Mercy, Brazil's Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, Israel's Sheba Medical Center and Canada's University Health Network, who joined in 2023. The alliance now spans seven countries across three continents, representing diversity in genetics, demographics and lifestyles to provide a massive repository of analyzable data.

"This is a major step toward moving healthcare from being reactive to proactively addressing the biggest concerns of patients and the communities we serve," said Joe Kelly, executive vice president, chief transformation officer for Mercy. "This unprecedented data set allows us to harness the power of artificial intelligence to develop algorithms and validate treatment plans effectively for complex patient populations. These algorithms, integrated directly into everyday clinical workflows, can help us predict the likelihood of chronic diseases and help to better proactively assist patients earlier in their care, improving outcomes and reducing costs for both patients and health systems."

Each organization will be able to look for trends, indicators, risk factors and more while retaining control over its de-identified outcomes through Mayo Clinic Platform's Data Behind Glass^[1] approach. Mayo Clinic and Mercy will develop products, algorithms and tools for their health systems that can be made available to other health systems for use in the same transformative way, potentially impacting the practice of medicine across the globe.

"After more than a year in development, we now have a platform that permits insights from Mercy's own data and that of Mayo Clinic. This data will improve patients' lives by helping us find diseases earlier and supporting more personalized care," said Byron Yount, chief data and AI officer for Mercy. "This will significantly deepen partnerships, broaden the scope of discovery, quicken the speed of innovation and ultimately improve care for patients everywhere. We are already learning with our new health care collaborators and reimagining how we approach health care challenges and opportunities. The way we produce the world’s most impactful solutions is evolving, and Mayo Clinic Platform is going to enable it."

^[1] Trademark Pending

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About Mayo Clinic Platform
Founded on Mayo Clinic's dedication to patient-centered care, Mayo Clinic Platform enables new knowledge, new solutions and new technologies through collaborations with health technology innovators to create a healthier world.

About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

About Mercy
Mercy, one of the 20 largest U.S. health systems and named the top large system in the U.S. for excellent patient experience by NRC Health, serves millions annually with nationally recognized care and one of the nation’s largest and highest performing Accountable Care Organizations in quality and cost. Mercy is a highly integrated, multi-state healthcare system including more than 50 acute care and specialty (heart, children’s, orthopedic and rehab) hospitals, convenient and urgent care locations, imaging centers and pharmacies. Mercy has over 900 physician practice locations and outpatient facilities, more than 4,500 physicians and advanced practitioners and 50,000 co-workers serving patients and families across Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Mercy also has clinics, outpatient services and outreach ministries in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. In fiscal year 2023 alone, Mercy provided more than half a billion dollars of free care and other community benefits, including traditional charity care and unreimbursed Medicaid.

Media contacts:

• Terri Malloy, Mayo Clinic Communications, newsbureau@mayo.edu
• Nancy Dixon, Mercy Media Relations, nancy.dixon@mercy.net

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