Research - April 2015 Archives

Mayo Clinic President and CEO John Noseworthy, M.D., submitted the following written testimony to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies on Wednesday on the fiscal 2016 federal budget: Introduction.  On behalf of the Mayo Clinic, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony regarding Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 appropriations.  For the reasons enumerated below, Mayo requests no less than $32 billion in FY 2016 funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  NIH-funded research is an essential national investment that increases understanding of human disease, spurs the development of novel diagnostics and therapies, and uncovers new strategies to prevent disease and to improve health. Because NIH is the largest source of biomedical research funding not only in the United States but also in the world, the failure of NIH funding to keep pace with medical inflation decreases support for and the conduct of basic research; inevitably, this compromises the realization of those crucial scientific breakthroughs that enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce disease and disability.  “Important secondary benefits of medical research such as job creation, regional and global economic activity, international competitiveness, intellectual property and commercializable products are likely adversely impacted as well.”[1]  While NIH funding is certainly not Mayo’s only Labor-HHS funding priority, it is on behalf of these research efforts that we focus on NIH funding in our testimony today. MEDIA CONTACT: Sharon Theimer, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, newsbureau@mayo.edu / 507-284-5005

Embargoed: Do not release before 2:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, April 22, 2015 Mayo Clinic researchers and collaborators have discovered a key cellular mechanism that contributes to bronchoconstriction and inflammation in asthma. Their studies may lead to a novel, effective asthma therapy for patients. The findings appear in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The team of researchers from Mayo Clinic, Cardiff University in Wales, King’s College London, the University of Manchester and the Open University in the United Kingdom, as well as the University of California San Francisco, showed that elevated extracellular calcium as well as other internal chemicals released in asthma can activate a “calcium-sensing receptor” (CaSR) on airway cells. The researchers found that CaSR expression is increased in asthma, and contributes to enhanced bronchoconstriction and inflammation that is typically seen in asthma. Importantly, they found that the effects of CaSR can be reversed by CaSR antagonists, also called calcilytics. Media Contact: Bob Nellis at Mayo Clinic Public Affairs: 507-284-5005 or newsbureau@mayo.edu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igf3telOA5E Unconscious bias, also called implicit bias, affects health care providers every day, especially when they are stressed or tired. Swift and automatic, it can reduce quality of care and even lead to medical errors. Michelle van Ryn, Ph.D., who is the director of Mayo’s Research Program on Equity and Inclusion in Health Care, says, “All of us, despite the best of all possible intentions, are affected by unconscious processes. It affects what we see, how we react, how we feel, how we behave. If we’re not aware of it and taking measures to counter it, it affects quality of care.”

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — When people find out — usually from a diagnostic scan looking at something else — that they have a lesion in their pancreas that could morph into pancreatic cancer, they can panic. They insist on having frequent CT scans and biopsies to monitor the lesion, or they ask for surgery. Physicians also don’t know if these abnormalities are dangerous, so the patients end up in surgery having part of their pancreas removed. Often the lesion is nothing to worry about. But a team of international physicians, led by researchers at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Jacksonville, Florida, has developed a profile of the patient who would be most at risk of developing lesions that are most likely to develop into cancer. Their analysis is published online today in the journal Digestive and Liver Diseases. “The factors we found that increase risk of pancreatic cancer now allow us to separate patients as either low or high risk,” says the study’s senior author, Michael B. Wallace, M.D., MPH, a gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic. “High-risk patients can then be scanned and biopsied more frequently or can opt for surgery, but low-risk patients don’t need such surveillance. They can be watched much less intensively.” MEDIA CONTACT: Kevin Punsky, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 904-953-0746, punsky.kevin@mayo.edu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DICF3w7ALjw Burnout is a common problem among U.S. doctors and studies suggest it adversely impacts quality of care and patient satisfaction. Many factors impact how physicians perceive their career. A new study suggests there’s an interesting correlation between physician burnout and the effectiveness of their supervisors. That’s what researchers found at Mayo Clinic when they undertook a large internal study on the satisfaction of physicians and the leadership qualities of their supervisors. The findings appear today in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.  “We found that at the work-group level, 11 percent of the variation in burnout and 50 percent of the variation in satisfaction among physicians was attributable to the leadership behaviors of their supervisor,” says Tait Shanafelt, M.D., Mayo researcher and first author of the study. “The behaviors of physician supervisors have a direct impact on the personal well-being of the physicians they lead.” Journalists: Sound bites with Dr. Shanafelt are available in the downloads. Media Contact: Bob Nellis at Mayo Clinic Public Affairs: 507-284-5005 or newsbureau@mayo.edu

New treatments for cancer and heart disease dominate the 2015 research awards recently announced by the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics. The state-supported funding was distributed among six research teams, based on competitive applications. Each team represents researchers from Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota. A seventh grant was also awarded to help support commercialization of a research finding previously funded by the Partnership. “These are seed grants, aimed at providing innovative researchers the means to get a scientific project off the ground and on the way toward a possible new treatment,” says Eric Wieben, Ph.D., of Mayo Clinic, program co-director for the Minnesota Partnership. “I’m pleased that we are entering our second decade of scientific progress with so many strong projects that could potentially change how medicine is practiced,” says Tucker LeBien, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, program co-director. The seven grants totaled just under $5.5 million. Media Contacts: Bob Nellis, Mayo Clinic 507-284-5005 Holly Ziemer, University of Minnesota 612-626-7037

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCCn9godAjg Allen Zderad thought darkness had invaded his world to stay. He’s among the 1-in-4,000 people who are born with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye ...