Claudia Manriquez Roman graduated with her Ph.D. in virology and gene therapy and regenerative sciences from Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in May 2023, after working under mentor Saad Kenderian, M.B., Ch.B., a hematologist and oncologist who specializes in immunology and immunotherapies. Her thesis project was primarily centered on the development and optimization of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, a cutting-edge immunotherapy that modifies a patient’s own immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. Her key focus was understanding the activation of CAR-T cells when encountering tumor cells and mitigating CAR-T cell death.

“It’s important for me to do meaningful work that is actually helping people who have cancer,” Dr. Manriquez Roman says.

Dr. Manriquez Roman’s studies revealed significant findings. She discovered that reducing the presence of a specific cytokine, an inflammatory molecule that’s present in patients who experience CAR-T cell-associated toxicities, resulted in CAR-T cells that are less prone to cell death. She also found similar results in depleting a specific receptor involved in the pathway that leads to cell death. Her research has opened the door to explore new approaches to improve the therapeutic efficacy of CAR-T cells in both blood cancers and solid tumors.

“These results provide opportunities to use secondary strategies for patients who have already relapsed or whose therapies are not working for them,” Dr. Manriquez Roman says. “The results we presented in my thesis lay the foundation in how we can better understand and modify these CAR-T cells so they can work better for patients.”

Dr. Manriquez Roman is now a scientist in the Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics at Mayo Clinic, with the goal of fully translating CAR-T cell products into therapies that can be tested in clinical trials and eventually become new treatments for patients.

“Students and researchers like Claudia are essential,” says Dr. Kenderian. “These skills of engineering, making and testing CAR-T cells from the lab to clinical trials are hard to acquire. This is how we train the next generation of physicians, scientists and physician-scientists so we can continue to make novel therapies for patients.”

The post Researcher Spotlight: Claudia Manriquez Roman, Ph.D., M.S. appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

To understand Jay Alix’s desire to give back to education, it’s important to go back to the unlikely time and place where he began his own learning experience — at his family’s Shell service station nestled in Waterbury, Connecticut.

From the time his mother stitched Jay his very own service station uniform at age 4, Jay received business lessons that laid the foundation for everything that would come in his career — and eventually his transformational gift to Mayo Clinic that the organization recognizes by naming the medical school Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine.

The Shell service station was more than just pumps — it was a hub of activity harkening back to an earlier time when stations provided full services, from repair to towing, and worked hard to cultivate a regular clientele by solving the customers’ problems.

One of the ways his parents encouraged him to work harder in grammar school was by rewarding Jay with additional hours at the station. He learned all manner of business and life lessons from his father, the mechanics and car dealers, the customers and their families, and more who came through the doors weekly, for years.

At 18, Jay became the youngest person in the Shell dealer training organization to be certified as a Shell dealer. It was a result of what he’d learned: developing expertise, putting customers’ needs first and relying on a team of employees with specialized skills. Jay and his father took pride in Shell’s motto — “Service Is Our Business.”

But one thing Jay wasn’t sure about was what was next in his life. He loved the service station. His vision revolved around a regional network of stations — maybe bigger. He went to the local junior college for an associate degree in marketing and management to further those goals.

“I was happy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to a university, but my dad said, ‘Why don’t you try it? You can always come back if it doesn’t work out,’” Jay says. “There were two parts to his advice — first, there were no expectations. Second, I could always come back to what I knew and loved. It was encouragement without expectation.”

Still, that didn’t mean Jay was primed or successful in everything that came next. It was perseverance and unwavering values that drove him to eventually become an innovator so visionary that a whole industry sprang up from his work of solving corporate problems and turning around distressed companies.

An Ideal Model

Jay’s parents and the community of regular customers who watched him grow up encouraged him to broaden his horizon. Jay entered the only school he applied to at the time — the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He went on to Rutgers University, where he earned an MBA and then passed the CPA exam. At the age of 25, just a few years out of college, he founded his own business, Jay Alix, CPA PC, a corporate turnaround firm.

Success followed. The firm evolved into Jay Alix & Associates, and at 31, he turned around Phoenix Steel Corp., the oldest steel company in the country. Soon more national and international brands came calling — Unisys, National Car Rental, Zenith, DirecTV, Ryder Trucks and countless others. His firm eventually became AlixPartners in 2002, and Jay retired as the largest shareholder in 2006.

While growing his own business over 25 years, Jay always sought out mentorship from entrepreneurs, business leaders and academics. In particular, he took a strong interest in and studied Mayo Clinic and other organizations started by a single person or family that later grew into top-flight businesses in different fields, such as finance, law, health care and more.

“I became fascinated in my continuing business education with Mayo Clinic’s model of care, which had thrived for more than 150 years,” Jay says. “It was impactful for me to see the health care analogies and metaphors as I built the architecture of my ‘corporate health care’ businesses.”

Studying Mayo Clinic and modeling parts of his company after it in the 1980s, Jay became even more interested in Mayo Clinic’s success following his first patient care experience in the 1990s.

“In 1994, I went to Mayo Clinic for my first executive physical. I was so impressed and so taken by it,” Jay says. “Now, I go many times a year, not because of a health issue, but because of the people.”

A Mayo-Minded Focus

Watching Mayo Clinic, and searching for his main philanthropic mission, Jay saw an opportunity to make a significant impact at Mayo through conversations with former President and CEO John H. Noseworthy, M.D.

Jay’s advising role and gifts grew over many years, supporting the Mayo Clinic Model of Care, which features unhurried exams and focuses on the highest-quality patient care with comprehensive and efficient evaluation, assessment and treatment. But there was another need — addressing the prohibitive costs young people must bear to receive a medical education.

“We need to ensure more people can choose to go to medical school. We need to make a medical education more affordable for people,” Jay says. “We must lower the cost burden to enter the profession so the best and brightest will choose to become doctors.”

To do so, Jay made a transformational gift to Mayo Clinic of $200 million. He also deepened his time commitment to Mayo Clinic to ensure its long-term success by joining the Board of Trustees. In recognition of the gift, Mayo Clinic named its medical school Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine and recognizes Jay as a Philanthropic Partner.

“It couldn’t be a more satisfying, gratifying, enriching part of my life,” Jay says. “Mayo Clinic’s unique approach to medical care, education and research changes the outcome for patients and provides hope. This was the inspiration for my own successful business model, and if I can pay that forward and help Mayo Clinic by using my time, abilities and resources, that’s my way to impact millions of lives as part of the Mayo team.”

And that’s a big part of what drew him to supporting education — solving a pressing problem and the need for more doctors by providing a large-scale solution to help educate the next generation of physicians.

Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine is a top 10-ranked national medical school, currently growing to graduate 100 doctors each year by 2021. About one-third of those graduates go on to join Mayo Clinic’s staff, while the rest use the knowledge received through training at Mayo Clinic to enhance other medical practices.

“The next generation of Mayo Clinic’s leaders is being trained now,” Jay says. “They will perpetuate the Mayo Clinic Model of Care and will fulfill the mission to meet the needs of patients first.”

Impacting Millions, One at a Time

Jay’s philosophy is refreshingly simple.

“I’ve become convinced that the nature and quality of our lives will be determined by the nature and the quality of our relationships,” Jay says. “So, if we form positive, productive relationships with high-quality, high-integrity people, really good human beings, we will likely have a high-quality positive life and we, too, will help them improve the quality of their lives.”

That’s what he sees in the eyes of all the students he meets at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine. Jay mentions that one of his greatest joys and a source of inspiration is to hear the students’ own stories of overcoming adversity, because it reminds him of the vital role education played in his own life.

“One of the lessons I’ve learned — the pursuit of happiness isn’t a job; it isn’t climbing a career ladder,” Jay says. “It’s about being productive, intellectually honest and doing things for the greater good. That gives us a stronger sense of self-esteem and self-worth, and purpose, and that’s where we find real satisfaction and ultimate happiness.”

And, when people of integrity have the time and space to think clearly and logically as well as humanistically about issues at hand, Jay believes that’s when even the biggest problems can be solved.

A System of Success

For Jay, it starts with a No. 2 pencil and 3-by-5 notecards and a time management system he learned from an early mentor about 40 years ago.

“The cards are my priority-setting and time management system. It helps clear my mind. The idea is, people make a big effort around a to-do list, but you can only do one thing, one task at a time. Most important achievements are made up of big, complex projects and solving major problems. But if you break complex things down to one item at a time on an index card, it focuses all your attention, and in a physical way it can be accomplished or solved quickly.

“Life is lived in the present, from moment to moment, from task to task. The past is gone, the future is not yet here. By being as present as possible, you can listen carefully and become a positive influence for solving problems.”

Opportunity Abounds

Jay’s list of people he admires at Mayo Clinic runs so long that he’s afraid of missing someone, but he acknowledges his friendship with Dr. Noseworthy and Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., Mayo Clinic president and CEO, as well as Mayo Clinic’s internal leadership board and department chairs.

In appreciation, he wanted to do something beyond his $200 million gift that would be innovative for Mayo Clinic’s future leaders. He worked with Dr. Noseworthy, who was president and CEO from 2009 through 2018 — a period of unprecedented growth as well as challenges — to create an endowment.

“One of the things I witnessed in the clinic from leadership is that there are always more great ideas than there are funds for,” Jay says. “By creating an endowed position supporting the CEO this year, it’ll produce a source of funding so President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., and all future CEOs can bring about bright ideas that will advance Mayo Clinic as a global institution.”

No matter what the future holds, Jay believes Mayo Clinic’s mission will remain paramount because of the personal commitment and individual dedication of Mayo Clinic’s staff.

“It’s a joy to collaboratively work with Mayo people. They are dedicated, smart, hardworking people; they have personal missions to help heal and cure the world,” Jay says. “When I see people at Mayo Clinic working together, collaborating to discover a solution to a patient’s problem because they’re sick or hurting and they’re healed and they feel better, that’s very inspiring.”

And it’s one thing that won’t ever change.

“Mayo Clinic keeps its eye on what makes it special — patient encounters. Each individual episode of care makes Mayo Clinic the exceptional place it is every day,” Jay says. “The world is changing rapidly, and that won’t stop. Mayo Clinic will continue to evolve and lead the charge of the change in health care. Mayo Clinic will continue to influence the practice of medicine through doctors, scientists, researchers, students, staff.”

A Joyful Time

There are opportunities for milestones ahead in Jay’s own life, including several he’s looking forward to with his partner, Una Jackman. He’s taking it all in stride, one day at a time.

“It brings me joy to think that I’ll be a grandparent,” he says, smiling.

Is one of Jay’s or Una’s six children between them expecting a baby?

“Well, not yet,” he chuckles. “But our kids will definitely be reading this.”

Still smiling, he thinks about their impact in his own life.

“Watching them as young adults as they take on life’s challenges makes me so proud. It’s joyful to see their lives continue to unfold as they grow and prosper.”

And with that, Jay reflects on all of his experiences, and how bright the future is to come.

“It’s meaningful and purposeful to see my own life in context, with the abilities and opportunities I was given, and to be able to fulfill the legacy of sacrifices my parents and grandparents made, by making a gift to help students work for the greatest good and help Mayo Clinic,” Jay says.

“And now I see it continuing far into my family’s future because in the end, it’s about how we help each other, and how we help humankind — in all ways.”

With more than 400 programs and five schools, Mayo Clinic is dedicated to transforming medical education and research training to improve patient care, accelerate discovery and innovation, and advance the practice of medicine.

Make a gift today to help us train the clinicians and researchers of tomorrow.

The post How a Love for Learning Inspired an Investment in Physicians of the Future appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

The farmhouse — known as Ashwood Farm — was homesteaded in 1862 and purchased by Mike’s ancestors in 1868. It most recently belonged to Mike’s uncle Mitch. When Mitch died in 2011, Mike and Tami purchased the farm and started sorting through family memories tucked away in closets and drawers throughout the house. Fading and frail, the volumes of letters they found from Mike’s mom, Jeanne Hoffman, detail joy, sorrow, adventure and a life intertwined with Mayo Clinic.

Coming to Mayo Clinic

Jeanne grew up on Ashwood Farm and lived there until she moved to Rochester, Minnesota, to attend Saint Marys School of Nursing in 1937.

"I just heard that we are going on the floor on Sunday. I don't think it's true, however, for we haven't learned enough yet," she wrote to her parents three weeks after arriving. She went on to share that Sister Cletus, the matron, commented that Jeanne and her classmates were the worst bedmakers she'd ever seen and that they had a lot to learn.

Jeanne took her training seriously and eventually gained the confidence of Sister Cletus and other instructors. According to family, Jeanne even helped care for William J. Mayo, M.D., at the Damon House where he lived near the end of his life. Jeanne's time at Saint Marys was one of great sorrow and transition for Mayo Clinic, with both Mayo brothers and Sister Joseph Dempsey, superintendent of Saint Marys Hospital, dying within months of each other.

After nursing school, Jeanne stayed at Saint Marys Hospital. "They are so busy here — usually 8 to 10 cases that can't get nurses daily — so you can see we are kept busy," she wrote. "Time off is a precious thing and hard to get."

However, Saint Marys Hospital would not be Jeanne's toughest nursing assignment.

Moving to the Military Front

Jeanne felt compelled to follow her brothers Mitch and Greg as well as her fiance, Bill Hoffman, into the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor launched the United States into World War II. A few months later, she sent her papers to the Navy, and in 1943, Ensign Jeanne Catherine Perrizo started her Navy service at a large hospital in Corona, California.

However, at the end of 1943 she wrote to her parents, "They are sending [N]avy nurses overseas now …. I don't want you to worry about this as I may never be sent out — and if and when the time comes, it doesn't pay to worry about it. I only hope I'll be big enough to take it all in my stride and do a good job."

On March 25, 1944, she arrived in Guadalcanal, part of the Solomon Islands and a battleground for many intense conflicts in the Pacific theater of the war. The fierce battles had subsided, but the dense tropical rainforest was challenging, especially for a nurse in the 1940s. "The weather isn't conducive to starched white uniforms, white shoes and least of all, rayon hose," she lamented in a letter shortly after arriving.

However, Jeanne’s most deep suffering came one evening after attending Mass on the base. A priest pulled her aside to deliver the devastating news that her brother Greg had been killed in the war. She wrote to her parents, "Just what one can say at a time like this, I don't know. Greg was everything that we could wish in a son and brother and our loss is great. God keep all of you — and give us all the courage we need to meet this tragedy."

It was amid the devastation and heartbreak of war that Jeanne's life again intersected with Mayo Clinic. An army reserve unit primarily staffed by Mayo Clinic personnel that organized a hospital in New Guinea would travel to nearby Guadalcanal where Jeanne was stationed. "It means a lot to work with those people you're used to and respect," she wrote. "It's almost a second [Mayo Clinic] here."

Returning Home

After the war, Jeanne returned home, married and continued her commitment to patients while raising a family in Blue Earth, Minnesota. She lived a few blocks from the hospital where she worked, caring for eight children during the day and patients most evenings after her husband returned from his shift at the local canning factory.

Mike says he doesn't remember his mom talking about her job, but once again, it was letters that gave him a glimpse into how she touched her patients and colleagues. "As the letters would come in after she passed away, they would talk about how extraordinary and devoted she was," he says. "She was such a kind and gentle woman, and the reaction you'd get from people she'd cared for was that they just loved her."

It was also during this time that Mayo Clinic again entered Jeanne's life when her son Joey developed a brain tumor and she returned to the familiar halls of Mayo Clinic for his care. Sadly, he passed away at age 9, but Jeanne and Bill found comfort in the compassion and care of Mayo's physicians and nurses during this difficult time.

Continuing the Legacy of Compassion

Jeanne again found comfort at Mayo Clinic when she herself was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-1970s. She battled cancer for nearly a decade before passing away in 1983. In her last moments, she was surrounded by her large family and Mayo Clinic nurses carrying on the same values she had brought to so many patients.  

Mike and Tami didn't want that to be where Jeanne's story ended. They wanted a meaningful way to recognize her legacy and ultimately supported education opportunities for nurses, including scholarships to pursue additional skills and creation of the Jeanne Perrizo Hoffman Nursing Simulation Learning Lab with a gift of $2 million to Mayo Clinic. Opened in 2022, the center is available 24/7 and allows nurses to practice skills and receive real-time feedback using state-of-the-art technology. For their generosity, Mayo Clinic recognizes the Hoffmans as Principal Benefactors.

“My mom was a wonderfully kind, humble and caring woman who was a loving gift to her family and so many others,” says Mike. “She was a member of the greatest generation whose life was all about service — service to God, country and family. She would be very pleased to see the transformative skills laboratory and how it serves others in her profession by helping them learn and grow.”

Since their gift to support nursing education, Mike and Tami continue to find ways to honor their families through their philanthropy. They made a generous $3.5 million gift to support capital projects and staff development at Mayo Clinic Health System locations near where the Hoffman family and Tami's family, the Paschkes, have lived for decades. In recognition of their continued generosity, Mayo Clinic named the breast clinic at Mayo Clinic Health System's Madison East Health Center in Mankato, Minnesota, the Hoffman Paschke Breast Clinic in 2024.

Make a gift now to help transform the future of health care through the education of tomorrow's nurses and health care leaders.

The post Mayo Clinic Nurse’s Legacy Lives on Through Letters and Student Learning appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

“Medical students face years of commitment at a significant financial cost. As a family, we are focused on making that journey less onerous in the hope that qualified, talented and in-need students are not discouraged by the financial burden,” Bill says. “We want students focused on the medical education that Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine can provide.”

Breaking Down Barriers

Mayo Clinic believes students should choose a career based on passion and skills rather than financial considerations or social background. This core value was part of the medical school’s original plan when it opened 40 years ago, and it remains a priority today.

“The doors of Mayo Clinic are open to all meritorious learners. We believe that diversity and inclusion help us to achieve our time-honored commitment to attract, develop and retain the next generation of health care professionals to pursue excellence in patient care, education and research,” says Yonas E. Geda, M.D., director, Office for Diversity, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.

Bill was born in Texas and grew up in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, moving with his father’s job in the State Department. He experienced the cultures of South America and the transformative power of education. Bill made a pact with his two best high school friends to attend the same college. They couldn’t decide, so they left their fate to a coin toss — Stanford University. It was while he was in Palo Alto, California, that Bill foresaw how education would become the catalyst for his achievements.

Today, Bill is known as one of Arizona’s most prominent business leaders. He is the founder of Indigo Partners, a private equity firm, and is considered by many industry experts as the man most responsible for the creation of the ultra-low-cost airline carrier in the U.S.

Bill jetted through college and law school, graduating in the time it takes most students to finish an undergraduate degree. Shortly after, he joined the Army, during the early ‘60s, initially as an infantry platoon leader and then as an Army intelligence officer serving in Washington, D.C., Panama and South America. After three years, Bill moved to Spokane, Washington, and began practicing law, where he was introduced to the local business community.

“I realized I liked business more than practicing law,” Bill says. This change led him to Phoenix to join the management of a large lumber, plywood and paper products company. He met Carolyn and traveled throughout the state for Southwest Forest Products, sparking his love for Arizona.

As Bill quickly advanced within the company, he began to hone his skills in building strong teams around him — unique individuals with diverse experiences, thoughts and skills. After the merger of Southwest Forest with another large packaging company, Bill decided to stay in Phoenix. He then managed a major bank restructuring and, on the completion of that, the reorganization of a convenience store company, Circle K. With each position, he questioned the status quo and made the difficult business decisions to move the company forward — leading to his moniker “Mr. Fix-It.”

It was 1992 when Arizona Gov. Fife Symington asked Bill to engage the management team of America West Airlines to avoid its liquidation bankruptcy and the loss of more than 6,000 jobs in the Phoenix area.

“I told the governor, ‘All I know about airlines is that the boarding pass tells me I’m seat 16B.’ But I knew the economic impact this would have on the community and accepted the challenge. My management style, if there was one, was to question everything I didn’t understand,” says Bill. “The airline wasn’t used to someone asking why or what the alternatives were.”

Bill transferred his turnaround skills from previous business ventures to America West, agreeing to stay on after the reorganization was complete for a total of nine years. America West then acquired US Airways and eventually merged with American Airlines. He is credited with hiring six of the seven top managers at American Airlines.

On leaving America West, Bill founded Indigo Partners, a private equity investment firm that focuses on air transportation. It currently is the major shareholder in Frontier Airlines (U.S.), Volaris (Mexico), Wizz Air (Hungary) and JetSMART (Chile).

Bill didn’t leave his career to a coin toss. He strategically built strong teams, evaluated inefficiencies and built flexible infrastructure and processes that allowed for continuous improvement.

“I’ve been very fortunate in my career. My family and I decided we wanted to support education. We pursued like-minded educational organizations, ones that personalize education to the student, challenge the status quo and are prepared to make changes that will drive innovation for the future,” Bill explains. “Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine is doing that now.”

Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine is educating medical students to solve the complex health care issues facing our world by pairing engineering skills with clinical expertise to ensure the needs of the patient always come first. Support the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science to turn learners into leaders.

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