A Childhood Dream, A Lifelong Mission

When Bradford Hoppe, M.D., was in middle school, he was told to make a collage using magazine cutouts to visualize his future goals. He created an image of a doctor living near the beach.

Today, his artwork has become a reality. Dr. Hoppe serves as a consultant in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Mayo Clinic and lives with his family in Atlantic Beach, Florida. But it’s not just a childhood dream that drives him. After nearly losing both his wife and his father to cancer, he is more determined than ever to transform the future of cancer care.

Following in His Father’s Footsteps

Raised in Los Altos, California, Dr. Hoppe grew up admiring his father’s lifelong career as a radiation oncologist at Stanford Medicine.

Dr. Hoppe says his dad’s work in Hodgkin lymphoma left a lasting impression that made him eager to follow in his footsteps. While traditional radiation could cure the condition, it could also lead to serious long-term side effects such as second cancers or heart complications decades later.

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“I became interested in this idea of optimizing clinical outcomes while minimizing risk of side effects. I knew I wanted to be part of the next generation of radiation therapy,” says Dr. Hoppe.

After earning a B.S. in biology at Stanford University and an M.D. at Cornell University Medical Center, Dr. Hoppe spent a year in Brazil conducting infectious disease and immunology research. He studied the impact of schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease, on the immune system and volunteered at a leprosy clinic.

“The work in infectious disease was really engaging in Brazil. But when I returned home, I knew I wanted to get back to my first passion: radiation oncology. I wanted to continue to advance the field just like my father had done.”

Shifting Coasts, Deepening Focus

After spending most of his life on the West Coast, Dr. Hoppe moved to the East Coast to pursue a radiation oncology residency at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he met his future wife, Sonia.

After completing an M.P.H. at Harvard School of Public Health, the couple then moved to Florida where Sonia began working in radiation oncology at Mayo Clinic and Dr. Hoppe became a faculty member at the University of Florida Health Proton Therapy Institute. There, he held the James E. Lockwood Endowed Chair in Proton Therapy and pioneered the development of proton therapy in the management of lymphoma, thymoma and lung cancer before joining Mayo Clinic in 2019.

“My wife had been working at Mayo Clinic as a radiation therapist for about 10 years before I joined,” says Dr. Hoppe. “When Mayo Clinic announced its plans for particle therapy, I knew it was the right move.”

Reimagining Carbon Ion Therapy

Dr. Hoppe is part of a team at Mayo Clinic that is bringing carbon ion radiation therapy to the United States. Similar to proton therapy, carbon ion can be delivered to a specific depth in the body, reducing damage to critical organs. However, unlike proton therapy, carbon ion causes clustered DNA damage, which is more effective in killing cancer cells, particularly with radiation-resistant cancers, and can be completed in less time than a traditional radiation therapy course. 

Mayo Clinic’s Duan Family Building in Florida will provide advanced cancer treatment options that are currently only available in Asia and Europe. The building opened to patients in July 2025, with the first carbon ion treatment expected to be available by 2028.

We are building upon existing strategies and making them better to shape a new future. And we’re getting closer every day.

— Bradford Hoppe, M.D.

Dr. Hoppe and his colleagues have toured and learned from existing carbon ion centers in Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Korea, Italy and Austria. But it’s not a simple copy-and-paste process.

“Mayo Clinic is approaching carbon ion therapy differently than other institutions,” explains Dr. Hoppe. “Traditionally, carbon ion therapy has been limited to rare, hard-to-treat tumors that don’t respond well to other treatments. But with the advances in precision medicine, we are working to identify patients with radioresistant forms of more common cancers who could benefit.”

Leading an International Collaboration

Dr. Hoppe is leading a collaborative clinical trial with centers in Europe and Asia to compare surgical treatment, proton radiation and carbon ion approaches for patients with pelvic bone sarcomas. The team is studying whether patients being treated with carbon ion therapy have higher cure rates compared with proton therapy and better functional quality of life compared with surgery.

Studies like this one will help experts better understand which cancers would benefit from carbon ion therapy.

“The key is knowing which patients will benefit from which treatments,” explains Dr. Hoppe. “It’s difficult for patients who have already undergone radiation unsuccessfully to jump into carbon ion because we don’t want to exceed radiation dose levels to critical structures and cause more problems for the patient. Our goal is to be able to identify the patients who would do better with carbon ion therapy at the time of diagnosis to improve outcomes and spare them from unnecessary side effects.”

A Mission Fueled by Experience

While Dr. Hoppe has realized his childhood dream, his mission has grown even more meaningful.

“My wife and my father both were diagnosed with metastatic cancers more than five years ago that were expected to be terminal,” says Dr. Hoppe. “Both have undergone cutting-edge, personalized treatments and are in remission.”

Dr. Hoppe is building on his father’s legacy — but also creating his own. His research in bone sarcomas is just the beginning.

“I imagine a future where Mayo Clinic will be able to identify patients most suitable for proton therapy and carbon ion radiation therapy through radiomic and genomic signatures. That means better outcomes, fewer side effects and more lives saved. We are building upon existing strategies and making them better to shape a new future. And we’re getting closer every day.”

The post A Childhood Dream, A Lifelong Mission appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Mayo Clinic is leading patient-centered healthcare transformation through our Bold. Forward. strategy, which aims to accelerate the discovery, translation and delivery of more Cures for both chronic and acute diseases; to Connect people with data to create new knowledge and deliver scalable, end-to-end solutions; and to Transform healthcare by creating its first comprehensive, scalable, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled care transformation platform — Mayo Clinic Platform.  

To accomplish true healthcare transformation, we are also transforming our physical spaces through Bold. Forward. Unbound., which reimagines space across all of Mayo Clinic’s campuses by introducing new facilities that combine innovative care concepts and digital technologies, blending inpatient and outpatient care to deliver and scale healthcare in entirely new ways.  

To envision what care can look like in 2030, let’s trace a potential patient’s journey through Mayo Clinic of the future.  

THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE OF THE FUTURE 

Meet Emily, a patient who begins her Mayo Clinic experience hundreds of miles away from Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She is seeking treatment for end-stage liver disease complicated by severe aplastic anemia, a condition in which the bone marrow stops producing enough new blood cells. This complex diagnosis requires both a liver transplant and cell therapy for bone marrow failure. Through a virtual consultation that includes her local doctor and Mayo Clinic specialists, her care team conducts a thorough evaluation, develops a diagnostic and treatment plan, and establishes a trusted, warm relationship with her. 

When it’s time to leave home to travel to Mayo Clinic, Emily receives digital directions, parking instructions and a personalized itinerary through the Mayo Clinic digital interface. The digital interface provides step-by-step navigation from home to her assigned parking ramp, tailored to her appointment and mobility needs. Her itinerary, care team photos and contacts, and visit details are all available in the app, reducing uncertainty and supporting a seamless experience. 

Upon her arrival, a dedicated support team easily recognizes and greets Emily, guiding her to her destination and ensuring she feels confident and cared for at every step. While on campus, Emily becomes part of Mayo Clinic’s “Interconnected Complex Care Neighborhood,” a unique care environment specifically designed for patients with serious and complex conditions like Emily’s.  

Unlike traditional healthcare settings where patients navigate between disconnected departments across a campus, neighborhoods bring together services in one centralized, welcoming environment. The neighborhood features strategically connected, flexible spaces — from the initial consultations to treatment planning to recovery support. These spaces can be reconfigured based on evolving needs. Co-located diagnostic and treatment options mean Emily receives her imaging, lab work and even procedures without going to another building. Most importantly, the neighborhood includes comfortable spaces where she and her family can connect with other patients facing similar journeys, creating a supportive community during her treatment.

Emily’s patient room is filled with natural light and an ergonomic layout, creating a calming environment for Emily and an efficient workspace for her care team. Before caregivers enter her room, a digital entryway display provides instant access to her personal information, with badge scanning for confidentiality. Robotic assistants automate supply delivery for her needs and even deliver her in-room meals. In front of her, an interactive digital whiteboard displays Emily’s daily schedule, upcoming appointments and progress toward going home. Environmental controls allow Emily to adjust the room’s lighting and sound for her comfort, and advanced camera systems quietly monitor her safety and enable virtual visits with loved ones.

Meanwhile, digital technologies and AI operate seamlessly in the background to support Emily and her care team, enhancing rather than interrupting human connections. For example, AI optimizes appointment timing across multiple specialists and digitally delivers relevant patient education material as her care journey progresses, helping her trust and feel confident in the care plan. AI also assists Emily’s care team by organizing clinical information, transcribing and summarizing relevant conversations, and surfacing relevant clinical insights into her complex medication regimen. This technological support means Emily’s team can deliver both compassionate and data-driven care, and she and her family experience a deeply personal, human touch throughout her treatment, recovery and beyond.

HEALING AT HOME 

After her stay at Mayo Clinic, Emily returns home to continue her post-treatment monitoring, thanks to support from her local doctor and connected devices that allow her team to monitor her health status from afar. Digital AI health tools track her vital signs and medication adherence, with alerts sent to her care team when values fall outside normal ranges, when doses are missed or when AI tools detect changes not visible to the human eye.  

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During her virtual check-ins, the team reviews trends in her data and symptoms to identify changes that might indicate complications, prompting adjustments to her monitoring schedule or in-person evaluations. Between visits, her care team stays connected through digital tools, enabling early intervention when concerning patterns emerge — either through in-person support or care from a distance.  

Emily’s journey in 2030 underscores the transformative power of fully integrated physical and digital healthcare services for both patients and care teams. Mayo Clinic continues to build this future through the choices and investments we make today. 

The post Emily’s Story: A 2030 Patient Experience  appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

In Minnesota, Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester represents a $5 billion investment over six years. It embodies Mayo Clinic's most significant and forward-looking vision for the future of healthcare by integrating our physical and digital infrastructure and blending inpatient and outpatient care. By 2030, Mayo Clinic will transform the Rochester campus and establish a new model for continuous, digitally integrated, patient-centered care.

Craig Daniels, M.D., critical care physician and medical director for Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, sat down with Mayo Clinic Magazine’s editorial team to provide an inside look at what fuels Mayo Clinic’s vision and motivates him to help lead this transformation. This interview has been edited for clarity.

How will these spaces be radically different from today’s healthcare environment?

We recognize that patients today experience outpatient, inpatient and virtual care — all delivered in different environments — which can feel quite bumpy. With Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, we are striving to create an environment where care is seamless for patients.

As we began designing the future of care as a single, integrated experience, we realized that traditional outpatient, inpatient and digital spaces would not work. Our spaces must be flexible to meet patients’ needs wherever they are in their Mayo Clinic healthcare journey.

That means designing buildings that do more than house care — they actively support and enhance it. For example, we are creating care "neighborhoods" where diagnostics, imaging, consultations and procedures occur in one continuous environment, reducing the need for patients to move from place to place.

We're also incorporating healing design principles in every element — spaces filled with natural light, expansive winter gardens, and areas of rest and reflection for both patients and their loved ones. We're integrating technology not as a layer on top, but as an embedded member of the care team: ambient intelligence, robotics, predictive analytics and automation will allow our teams to focus more on the human aspects of caregiving.

At Mayo Clinic, we’ve always understood that the physical environment can shape medical outcomes. Just as Dr. Henry Plummer’s vision for the Plummer Building transformed medicine a century ago, this next generation of care environments will transform how we deliver hope and healing — not just for today, but for the next hundred years.

To fully live our primary value — the needs of the patient come first — we must design our spaces with patients at the center.

— Craig Daniels, M.D.

Why is now the right time for this investment?

Healthcare is at the precipice of transformation. As stewards of Mayo Clinic — the world’s leader in healthcare — we must lead this transformation and make Mayo Clinic and all healthcare better for patients and staff.

We have the tools, the technology and an incredibly talented staff who dedicate their lives to improving patient outcomes and experiences. This allows us to solve increasingly complex problems and deliver more cures. Combined with physical spaces in a new healthcare design centering on patients’ needs, we will elevate our collaborative care model to provide even more hope and healing in the world.

This is the moment when digital technology, artificial intelligence, robotics and human-centered design are converging — and Mayo Clinic is uniquely positioned to bring them together to transform how care is delivered.

Bold. Forward. Unbound. is not just an investment in buildings — it’s an investment in people, in tools that reduce burdens on staff, and in care environments that foster teamwork, innovation and healing. These spaces are designed to be flexible and intelligent, evolving with patient needs and medical advancements over the next century.

We cannot stand still. We have clarity of purpose, a shared vision and the momentum to act. Now is the time.

Tell us more about the “neighborhoods.” What is innovative about this concept?

To fully live our primary value — the needs of the patient come first — we must design our spaces with patients at the center. This means centralizing care teams and services around patients' unique needs. Neighborhoods at Mayo Clinic are innovative care environments designed to transform how healthcare is delivered and to elevate the experience of both patients and staff.

Historically, healthcare buildings have been built around departments and specific services. Think about the fact that almost all radiology equipment is located on the bottom floor of a hospital. This means that patients often need to travel significant distances between appointments for their imaging. This is also largely true for laboratory and specialty care.

By creating care neighborhoods, we'll reduce the distance patients need to travel for appointments and more closely situate things they most often will need. We believe they will experience better care, better outcomes and greater comfort throughout their entire time at Mayo Clinic.

These neighborhoods allow our teams to work side by side, surrounded by familiar spaces and supported by curated digital tools — breaking down the boundaries that have historically separated departments and stages of care. This will foster greater team-based collaboration, continuous innovation, and integration of clinical practice, research and education.

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What motivates you most about this work?

The Mayo-Franciscan “RICH TIES” values — Respect, Integrity, Compassion, Healing, Teamwork, Innovation, Excellence and Stewardship — perfectly align with our primary value of putting patients’ needs first. I am driven to live out our values through the transformational work of Bold. Forward. Unbound.

Even at an incredible place like Mayo Clinic, opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and so I am excited for my colleagues and me to directly contribute to building and experiencing these new spaces that will provide even better care to our patients and care teams.

It’s a generational moment to reimagine how we deliver care, to remove barriers for our staff, and to shape a future where patients receive more seamless, compassionate and innovative care than ever before. We’re building something that will carry forward the mission of Mayo Clinic — not just for today’s patients, but for those we haven’t met yet, and for future staff members who will carry this work forward long after we’re gone. That sense of responsibility — of stewardship — is what drives me.

The post Building Tomorrow’s Healthcare With Craig Daniels, M.D. appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Powering Cancer Care With Particle Accelerators at Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is home to the highest-volume radiopharmaceutical practice in the world. As a result, its researchers and clinicians are well versed in radioactive isotopes of all varieties for cancer imaging and care. These radioisotopes are critical for building radiopharmaceutical treatments to target specific molecular markers on cells such as those found in cancerous tumors. But these isotopes can be difficult to come by and often do not occur naturally in our environment.

Enter particle accelerators, powerful machines for generating radioactive compounds. Particle accelerators, which include machines like cyclotrons and linear accelerators, allow medical teams to produce specific radioisotopes on demand, generating opportunities for researchers to explore new radioactive compounds and providing clinicians with the building blocks of radiopharmaceutical drugs to diagnose and treat a multitude of cancers.

Mayo Clinic is ready to install the next level of high-tech equipment to drive drug discovery and cancer therapy. This new equipment will allow Mayo Clinic to double down on leading the charge to develop new, lifesaving cancer therapies, and particle accelerators are making it possible.

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Radiopharmaceuticals for Illuminating and Eliminating Cancer

In cancer care, the radioactive isotopes generated by particle accelerators are used for two main purposes: diagnostics and treatment.

In cancer diagnostics, radioisotopes that emit relatively low amounts of energy can be combined with molecules like antibodies that can target specific markers on the surface of cancer cells. Once the molecules have attached to the cancer cells, clinicians can use a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner to visualize the energy released by the radioisotope, allowing them to pinpoint the location of tumors in the body.

When it comes to treating cancer, radioisotopes that emit high-energy particles are similarly combined with targeting molecules. In this case, however, instead of visualizing that signal on a PET scanner, the particles released by the radioisotope are absorbed by the cancerous cells. The energetic particles released by these radioisotopes, known as beta or alpha particles depending on the treatment, break apart the DNA of the cells to kill the cancer.

In both approaches, clinicians need ready access to the correct radioisotopes to develop and administer the right treatment.

Overcoming Resource Challenges With On-Demand Isotope Production

While some of the radioisotopes used for generating these treatments can be found in nature, there are a variety of reasons that it is challenging to use naturally sourced isotopes.

First, not all radioisotopes are found in the environment. Secondly, even for those found in nature, often it is not in the amount needed to produce treatments for patients, and it can be quite difficult and costly to extract and isolate the isotopes. Finally, these radioisotopes frequently decay very rapidly, meaning they release the energetic particles that make them valuable for medical applications and become inactive. This can make it difficult to transport the material to hospitals while it is still active.

The effort, expense and logistical challenges of sourcing radioisotopes from nature have led the field of medicine to turn to particle accelerators (among other manufacturing approaches), which allow for production of these compounds on demand. These machines use particle acceleration technology to fire particle beams at stable isotopes. The interaction between the beam and the stable isotope produces short-lived radioisotopes for use in medical applications.

Expanding Capabilities With Next-Generation Technology

Because these radioisotopes are unstable and decay rapidly, the ability to produce them on-site makes it possible for medical teams to quickly generate radiopharmaceutical drugs and get them to the patients who need them. This is why Mayo Clinic has cyclotron particle accelerators on each of their three campuses in Jacksonville, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and Rochester, Minnesota. The goal is to ensure that the patients who need these treatments can get them as soon as they need them.

However, not all accelerators are created equal. The current cyclotrons at Mayo Clinic can produce the radioisotopes needed for various types of medical imaging, such as choline-11, fluoride-18 and nitrogen-13. These radioisotopes are comparatively light. The isotopes needed for cancer treatment, such as lutetium-177, actinium-225 and radium-223, are much heavier and can’t be produced using the existing equipment. These heavier isotopes require manufacturing processes using higher-energy particle accelerators or other powerful equipment to generate the correct radioisotopes.

Larger accelerators have other benefits too. With their greater capacity, they can more quickly produce radioisotopes, providing researchers and clinicians with more access to the elements needed for research and medical use. They are also capable of generating a wider range of radioisotopes, allowing for the creation of diagnostic, therapeutic and research particles all in the same machine.

Philanthropy Fuels Innovation in Cancer Care

The Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center sees nuclear oncology and radiopharmaceutical therapies as essential elements in the array of cancer treatment options. As research breakthroughs advance the field of theranostics for cancer diagnostics and care, so too do the efforts of clinicians and investigators to translate and apply these advances.

To stay at the forefront of nuclear medicine and ensure that our patients are never left behind due to material shortages or operational challenges, the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center hopes to build new, larger accelerators at each of the three campuses to ensure that all sites can produce any radioisotopes needed for all possible medical and research applications.

Mayo Clinic researchers are developing the therapies of the future, licensing these new therapies to companies, and running clinical trials to validate that they are safe and effective. Larger machines capable of producing therapeutic radionuclides allow Mayo Clinic scientists and physicians to accelerate the discovery science needed to develop these new therapies and attract the best and the brightest in the field to join the Mayo team.

The generosity of benefactors plays a crucial role in allowing Mayo Clinic to invest in cutting-edge technologies like larger accelerators, which are essential for advancing patient care. These philanthropic gifts provide the financial foundation necessary to undertake ambitious projects that might otherwise be out of reach, allowing Mayo Clinic to remain at the forefront of medical innovation.

By supporting the acquisition of advanced equipment, benefactors directly contribute to improving diagnostic capabilities and treatment options for patients, ultimately helping Mayo Clinic stay true to its primary value — putting the needs of the patient first.

The post Powering Cancer Care With Particle Accelerators at Mayo Clinic appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

On the Cutting Edge of Care

Michael Story, Ph.D., was on the road to retirement.

It was 2022, and at the end of that road he would complete an illustrious 35-year career at the interface of cancer, advanced radiation treatments and charged particle radiobiology. He’d been a renowned cancer researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center and University of Texas-Southwestern Medical Center in the aftermath of completing his Ph.D. in cellular and molecular radiation biology from Colorado State University.

There was just one big goal he’d have to leave behind — a carbon ion radiotherapy facility. Though the original technology and facility was created in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, it closed in the early 1990s, leaving no facility in the United States. This left carbon ion technology to be adopted by other nations, while Dr. Story and others toiled for decades to bring it back to the U.S.  

“We kept getting slapped back — the financial climate, the Great Recession and then COVID-19,” he recalls. He started to think his big goal would be just that — fleeting images in his mind of a world-class carbon ion therapy center in the United States — until Mayo Clinic picked up the gauntlet and decided to build a carbon ion radiotherapy center at the Florida campus.

Not really wanting to retire, and especially not with a new facility so close to fruition, he called colleagues at Mayo Clinic to see if there would be any interest in having someone with his background as a part of the Mayo Clinic in Florida carbon ion radiotherapy team. The answer he got back was resounding. So much so, he now sits in his new office in the Department of Cancer Biology and Radiation Oncology at Mayo Clinic in Florida.

Retirement can wait. Dr. Story is reenergized by helping build the first hospital-based carbon ion radiation therapy center in Jacksonville.

Right Treatment, Right Patients

“That kind of work just hasn’t been done for carbon ion radiotherapy. We’re on the bleeding edge."

Dr. Story is quick to point out that not every person with cancer will be eligible for carbon ion therapy. It’s critical to get patients the exact treatment modality that will work for their cancer, whether it’s chemotherapy, surgery, immunotherapy or some form of radiotherapy. The key is to have as many options as possible.

For example, many patients can be treated with X-rays or protons and have long-lasting positive results. Carbon ions are best used for people with tumors that are radioresistant, like sarcomas and a variety of pancreatic and lung cancers, among others. In an ideal world, it would be best to tailor a patient’s therapy to treatments that are the most appropriate for their disease, whether via carbon ions or some other radiation treatment.  

Dr. Story's research aims to personalize cancer treatment by using genetic analysis to find specific patterns in tumor DNA. These patterns can indicate whether a patient might resist traditional radiation therapy. By identifying these genetic markers, doctors can better determine which patients may benefit from alternative treatments, like carbon ion radiotherapy.

“Looking at biomarkers, especially for patient selection, is a critical feature for personalizing therapy,” says Dr. Story.

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The Science Behind
Carbon Ion Therapy

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Abundance of Experts

Dr. Story’s job is to develop the radiobiology research arm of the carbon therapy program and build a program led by multiple top-level investigators. The overall effort in radiation oncology must be multidisciplinary by its nature. It includes researchers from other disciplines, such as Chris Beltran, Ph.D., the program’s lead physicist; Sungjune Kim, M.D., Ph.D., a radiation oncologist and immunologist who leads translational biology efforts; and Brad Hoppe, M.D., M.P.H., the carbon ion radiotherapy medical director.

Together, they’re pushing at the boundaries of what we know about using carbon ion therapy to treat cancer. “Drs. Kim, Beltran and Hoppe are excellent scientists,” Dr. Story says. “We’ll be able to adapt their research from X-rays and protons to use with carbon ions quite readily.”

Mayo Clinic researchers will sample cancerous and normal tissues and examine end points of treatments to see how the course of treatment affects them — to find either advantageous or deleterious effects. This kind of work has been done for many other cancer treatments like chemotherapies, but carbon ion radiation treatment is new to the United States.

“That kind of work just hasn’t been done for carbon ion radiotherapy. We’re on the bleeding edge,” Dr. Story says.

Better understanding the effects of carbon ion therapy on healthy and cancerous tissues will allow clinicians to better tailor treatment for each patient, combining therapies to maximize their cancer-killing power and minimize off-target damage. One area of particular interest is in understanding how DNA repair pathways respond to radiation damage. Every cell in the body has these pathways to fix damage in DNA when it occurs. If there is too much damage, the cell dies. This is the idea behind all radiation therapy — overwhelming cancer cells with DNA damage while avoiding damaging normal tissues as much as possible.

Dr. Story and his team are examining how different DNA repair processes are utilized after radiation therapy to determine which pathways can be amplified or reduced to improve the efficacy of carbon ion therapy.

“What mutations in DNA repair pathway genes could make cancer cells more sensitive to carbon ion radiation?” asks Dr. Story. “What genes can be knocked down, or knocked out, that would make carbon ions that much richer?”

And, just as importantly, what cellular pathways should be protected to keep normal tissues healthy and shielded from damage to give patients the most effective treatment with the best possible outcomes?

Together, the team is working to find ways to genetically prime tumors to be destroyed, prime the immune system to target tumor cells, shield normal tissues from inadvertent damage, and put patients into the treatment pathways that will help them with speed and care.

"Drs. Kim, Beltran and Hoppe are excellent scientists. We’ll be able to adapt their research from X-rays and protons to use with carbon ions quite readily."

Forging Ahead

There will be time for Dr. Story to explore Jacksonville’s restaurants and beaches, the types of things one might do in retirement. For now, he’s busy with his new research lab while watching the Florida campus carbon ion radiotherapy center become a reality, and looking forward to the day when the first patient is treated there.

The post On the Cutting Edge of Care appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Understanding to Innovate

By the time most students are finishing medical school, they have a pretty good idea what specialty they’re most interested in.

It took Sungjune Kim, M.D., Ph.D., a bit longer.

Dr. Kim, then a medical student at Vanderbilt University, considered multiple options. A career as a surgical oncologist was appealing, but so too was a research career, and marrying the two seemed difficult.

Dr. Kim waffled over his choice. He worried that the decision would lock him into a single track for the rest of his life. He didn’t want to limit his research options or miss out on working directly with patients. And he definitely didn’t want to stray far from the basic sciences, the first of his many academic loves.

Radiation oncology was the answer. Since 2023, Dr. Kim has been the vice chair of research in Mayo Clinic’s Department of Radiation Oncology. It’s an exciting time for the field and for patients, where an innovative technology is improving the precision and speed of care. Carbon ion therapy — also known as carbon ion radiation therapy or CIRT — can kill cancer cells that may be resistant to proton beam therapy, allowing for precise treatment with minimal damage to the surrounding tissue.

Dr. Kim works closely with Brad Hoppe, M.D., M.P.H., medical director of the Department of Radiation Oncology; physicist Chris Beltran, Ph.D.; and radiation oncologist Michael Story, Ph.D. Together, the group seeks to expand the technique’s reach. There are still unknowns about the deeper technical details of how carbon ion therapy works, which must be better understood if the therapy is to be extended to more patients.

“Because of the expenses associated with its infrastructure, we need to provide a really strong rationale for carbon ion therapy to be built to serve the U.S.,” says Dr. Kim.

Mayo Clinic is exploring carbon ion therapy from two directions. Dr. Beltran studies the physics of carbon ion and how it stimulates the immune system in ways that other particle therapies don’t. Dr. Story is building their combined carbon therapy research arm, helping to combine research to keep Mayo’s physicians up to date with critical new knowledge. This knowledge is critical to furthering carbon ion’s clinical applications.

"We really need to understand the underlying biology of carbon ion therapy to innovate the field."

Dr. Kim’s focus is on the clinical evidence for carbon ion therapy.

“We really need to understand the underlying biology of carbon ion therapy to innovate the field,” Dr. Kim says. “Because if it's a black box, and it could be just statistical noise, we would never be able to tell. So that is what I'm trying to set out to do — to give a clear rationale for why some patients may benefit from the escalated therapy with carbon ions.”

Curious From the Start

Dr. Kim excelled at math as a child in South Korea and showed enough promise to earn admission to the ultra-competitive Seoul Science High School for Gifted Students. The school is known for its rigorous selection process and the achievements of its alumni. Of the 180 students in Dr. Kim’s class, about 140 have earned Ph.D.s.

Early in his schooling, Dr. Kim believed he’d be a theoretical physicist like Albert Einstein, but he grew to feel that it would be hard to contribute much more to the field.

So he decided to study chemistry at Seoul National University. It felt like a middle ground. He could go back into physics if he wanted, given the closeness of the fields, but it also left open the possibility of biology, which he viewed as more practical.

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The Science Behind
Carbon Ion Therapy

Mayo Clinic is pioneering the reintroduction of carbon ion therapy in North America with the construction of a new facility in Jacksonville, Florida. This will be the first clinical carbon ion radiation therapy center of its kind on the continent.

How does this innovative therapy work, and how does it stack up against other cancer radiation therapies? Discover the science behind the treatment.

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Dr. Kim’s interests changed again after he was inducted into the army in South Korea, where military service is compulsory.

Because of his strong English, he expected to serve as a liaison between the South Korean and U.S. armies. Instead, since Dr. Kim’s English was so proficient, the South Korean Army decided to put him in their own medical school to train medics.

That was his first exposure to medicine, and he wasn’t immediately sold. Initially he thought medicine was a purely clinical practice, and after his service he considered going back to a basic science research program.

“I was just flip-flopping,” Dr. Kim says. There were simply too many choices to make. So, he kept his options open while pursuing an M.D.-Ph.D. program, landing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  

Finding His Path

Dr. Kim started taking immunology classes at Vanderbilt. He was attracted to the “complex systems with complex problems that challenged your brain.”

He’d done his graduate school research on natural killer T cells, a critical cellular component of innate immune systems, a commonly mutated cell in a variety of cancers, and a common culprit in skin allergies.

As he neared graduation, he contemplated dermatology and rheumatology. Neither felt like the right fit. Instead, he gravitated to radiation oncology. Dr. Kim had the heavy physics background needed for the field, and it helped him stand out among his medical school colleagues.

Dr. Kim interviewed for residencies in 2009, before any immune checkpoint therapy like a PD-1 inhibitor had been available for patients.

“People gave me looks for being an immunologist going into radiation oncology,” he says. “Cancer immunotherapy was more of a discovery area, not in practice yet.”

During his residency, Dr. Kim was exposed for the first time to carbon ion radiation as a treatment modality. He loved the pure physics of carbon ion and was impressed with the benefits offered by the therapy.

“It has high LTE — linear energy transfer — which leads to higher relative biological effects, while retaining the treatment abilities of particle therapy,” Dr. Kim says.

Low-energy photon beams, if shot at a human body, will just bounce right off. High-energy photon beams — like X-rays — will penetrate deep into the body, but deposit radiation along their paths, which can damage healthy tissue. Carbon ion therapy has a unique physical property that precisely delivers a radiation dose within a millimeter-sized target into tumors, reducing the risk to the surrounding tissue.

While there are mysteries about carbon ion therapy, there are already some answers as to why it works. It stimulates the immune system, and it damages cancer cell DNA. The therapy hasn’t had a direct path to patient care, something Dr. Kim can relate to from his past.

In the 2000s when Dr. Kim was a student, research into new cancer immunotherapies was in its infancy, in preclinical studies in mice and cell lines.

"That is what I'm trying to set out to do — to give a clear rationale for why some patients may benefit from the escalated therapy with carbon ions."

“There was basically no human relevance at that point in time,” Dr. Kim says. But evidence began to pile up, and the field, along with Dr. Kim, took notice. “When it took off, it took off very, very quickly.” Dr. Kim and the entire Mayo Clinic radiation team — with unique expertise in the physics and immunology of the field — are expecting the same quick takeoff.

The post Understanding to Innovate appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Knowing the Patient Experience

Chris Beltran, Ph.D., found his calling looking at the bright canvas above him. There, high above the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in rural northern New Mexico, lay constellations of stars and planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.

As a student, Dr. Beltran kept focused on the skies, receiving a scholarship to study the ways Mercury disobeys Newtonian mechanics. He traveled northeast to Indiana University in Bloomington for his doctorate, intending to do experimental work on string theory.

“But there aren’t that many jobs in string theory,” he said with a laugh. So, he switched to another interest with more real-world application — nuclear physics.

At Indiana, he studied proton spallation, shooting protons at different atoms and studying what those atoms ejected in the collision. This is when he first learned about ion therapy, the cutting-edge therapy that can attack difficult-to-treat cancers that resist radiation and chemotherapy. He would come back to ion therapy and use it at Mayo Clinic, but first he returned to New Mexico to finish his doctorate at Los Alamos National Labs, which led to a residency at Mayo in 2004.

By then, work had already started on using proton therapy for cancers, and Dr. Beltran has taken the lead on improving and extending the technique.

Now as a faculty member and medical physicist at Mayo Clinic in Florida, Dr. Beltran is not only pioneering ion beam therapies, but also working to improve accessibility for the many patients for whom these techniques are often unavailable.  

Beyond the math and physics, he is working to make patients’ lives easier and calmer throughout the treatment process. 

“I want to understand what the patient goes through,” he said. “Anything you can do to actually make the treatment quality better but also decrease the amount of time patients have to spend there on the table, we should do.”

"I want to understand what the patient goes through."

That’s why Dr. Beltran has simulated the patient experience by going to the treatment table and lying motionless for the treatment’s half-hour timetable. He wants to improve future therapies in an effort to provide the best possible patient experience. 

Improving the Options

Traditional radiotherapy has been successful for a variety of cancers, but it has its drawbacks. Radiation works by wreaking havoc on a tumor cell’s DNA until the damage becomes irreparable.

But it’s difficult to focus on just the tumor — radiation can damage a patient’s normal tissue, creating single-strand breaks in cellular DNA that may or may not get repaired.

This can result in side effects, like memory loss and fatigue. On top of that, many cancer types can repair radiation-induced damage and won’t even respond to this kind of treatment.

Some cancers, like bone sarcomas in the pelvis, can grow so rapidly and with such tenacity that the dose of radiation needed to combat it would just harm the patient more. Hypoxic and recurring tumors are also frequently beyond the reach of radiation or chemotherapy. 

Proton therapy is a promising alternative that uses a synchrotron, a particle accelerator, to whip protons into a swiftly moving stream that can more directly damage tumors with fewer side effects. And Mayo Clinic, with Dr. Beltran as part of a dynamic leadership team, is bringing a new improvement over proton therapy: carbon ion therapy.

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The Science Behind
Carbon Ion Therapy

Mayo Clinic is pioneering the reintroduction of carbon ion therapy in North America with the construction of a new facility in Jacksonville, Florida. This will be the first clinical carbon ion radiation therapy center of its kind on the continent.

How does this innovative therapy work, and how does it stack up against other cancer radiation therapies? Discover the science behind the treatment.

Read More

All these treatments have the same general scientific concept — hurl high-energy particles at cancer cells to destroy their genomes — but carbon ion therapy comes with a quantum leap of precision. A carbon ion is 12 times heavier than a proton and delivers magnitudes more energy in tighter clusters. 

“This creates a bunch of breaks in small areas, like little explosions,” says Dr. Beltran. “You create so many breaks that the cell can’t repair them all and it dies.”

Radiotherapies also stimulate tumors to release antigens into the bloodstream, with carbon ion therapy producing more antigens than previous methods.

That means, Dr. Beltran says, that it could be nicely combined with something like chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy — known as CAR-T — where immune cells are programmed to detect specific antigens and attack tumors.

Thinking of Patients

Through all his experience, Dr. Beltran has learned a critical bit of wisdom when building medical treatments: think of the patient perspective.

“The technical aspects of this fall on me and my team. When we turn on the beam, we have to get the best-quality treatment to the patient,” says Dr. Beltran. “Patients are coming in every day for several weeks, and we need to provide the best experience possible for them.”

Dr. Beltran views his position — a physicist surrounded by doctors, nurses and patients — as a critical fulcrum for many patient outcomes.

“It’s our responsibility to understand all the fundamental physics and to communicate it to the medical staff, the doctors and nurses, so they can communicate it to the patients,” he says. “With carbon ion therapy it’s not just the physics — there’s the biological aspect.

“Normal tissues and tumors react differently, so when something does come up, you can have an informed opinion on different cases.”

Mayo Clinic is investing more than $233 million in a transformational proton and carbon ion center known as the Integrated Oncology Building at its Florida campus, and Dr. Beltran is involved every step of the way.

Millions of electrical connections are being made just for the synchrotron alone, with shielding 3- to 5-feet thick. The synchrotron itself has a 60-meter circumference, is made up of hundreds of tons of auxiliary equipment, and can hit a tumor with precision within 1 millimeter. The facility is the size of a football field. Dr. Beltran wants to be there when it’s all put in place.  

“I go once a week to look at the building and see how it’s coming up,” he says.

Besides checking in on the new center, he frequently visits Japan — where carbon ion therapy is already in use — to meet with collaborators and inspect equipment that the electronics manufacturer Hitachi is producing for the center. Hitachi had never built the kind of facility that Dr. Beltran is working on — one that can deliver both proton and carbon ion therapies simultaneously. 

However, just bringing new technologies and new treatment options to the United States isn’t enough. Mayo’s ion therapy center in Florida will be the first and only of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

"It’s very important for the U.S. to be at the forefront of clinical therapies and patient experiences. I’m glad Mayo Clinic is leading the way."

Dr. Beltran estimates that between 30,000 and 200,000 patients per year in the United States could benefit from carbon ion therapy alone. The new facility initially will be able to handle 300 carbon ion patients per year. That leads Dr. Beltran to his true North Star for the patient experience — making these therapies even more accessible to all.

“It’s very important for the U.S. to be at the forefront of clinical therapies and patient experiences,” Dr. Beltran says. “I’m glad Mayo Clinic is leading the way.”

The post Knowing the Patient Experience appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

How does this innovative therapy work, and how does it stack up against other cancer radiation therapies?

How Does Carbon Ion Therapy Work?

Carbon ion therapy is a type of radiation treatment that uses beams of carbon ions to target and destroy cancerous tumors. At its core, carbon ion therapy works by accelerating carbon atoms to nearly the speed of light and stripping them of their electrons, creating positively charged carbon ions that are sent directly into the tumor. Within the tumor, these ions damage the DNA of the cancer cells. This leads to breaks in the chromosomes that can kill the cells.

When carbon ions enter the body, they deposit most of their energy at a specific depth, known as the Bragg peak, which can be adjusted to coincide with the location of the tumor. This means that the radiation from the carbon ions can be finely tuned to just that targeted location, damaging and killing cancer cells while minimizing damage to the surrounding tissue. This precision is especially important when treating cancers located near or in vulnerable or sensitive parts of the body.

How Does Carbon Ion Therapy Compare to Other Radiation Therapies?

Radiation therapy has been a part of cancer treatment for over a century and is currently used in approximately half of the people diagnosed with invasive cancers in the U.S. Conventional radiation therapy uses X-rays, which kill cancer cells using a beam of high-energy photons. However, X-rays can’t be precisely targeted. In addition, due to the molecular makeup of the tumor, some cancers are radioresistant and don’t respond well to X-ray therapy.

Proton therapy uses protons, which have mass and charge as opposed to photons, allowing for more precisely targeted radiation to the cancer. This ensures most of the radiation falls within the target, reducing the amount of radiation that hits normal tissue, which is expected to minimize side effects from treatment.

Carbon ions are bigger and more massive than protons, which means they are more effective at killing cancer cells than protons or photons. They are so powerful that they can even kill cancer cells that are resistant to proton and X-ray radiation. All these traits mean that carbon ion therapy can be used to precisely target and kill tumor cells while minimizing the damage to the surrounding healthy tissue, and that patients can be treated with a lower dose of radiation and fewer treatments.

Possible side effects of carbon ion therapy include those commonly seen with other radiation therapies, such as hair loss, fatigue, headaches and skin reactions.

Cancer Cells Without Radiation Therapy

Cancer cells contain mutated DNA, which allows them to grow and divide uncontrollably, forming tumors. Without treatment, these cells continue to divide, potentially spreading to other parts of the body.

Standard Radiation Therapy

Standard radiation therapy uses X-rays or gamma rays to damage the DNA of cancer cells. While effective, this type of radiation can also impact healthy cells along the path of the beam, leading to side effects.

Proton Beam Therapy

Proton beam therapy delivers a targeted dose of radiation to the tumor in the form of high-energy particles called protons. Protons deposit most of their energy at a specific depth, allowing for more precise treatment of the cancerous area and minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissues.

Carbon Ion Therapy

Carbon ion therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy that uses heavier carbon particles to deliver a more potent dose of radiation to cancer cells. Carbon ions can cause more irreparable DNA damage compared to standard radiation or proton therapy and are particularly effective at treating tumors that haven’t responded to other treatments.

Where Is Carbon Ion Therapy Available?

There are many challenges facing the widespread use of carbon ion therapy because of the significant infrastructure and costs required to build and operate carbon ion facilities. In 2023, there were only 15 carbon ion therapy centers worldwide, across Asia and Europe.

Mayo Clinic is developing its new carbon ion therapy center in Jacksonville in partnership with Hitachi Ltd., experts in particle therapy technologies. It will be part of an integrated oncology facility that also includes proton therapy and conventional radiation treatments.

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Mayo Clinic has been studying carbon ion therapy since the 2010s, with its radiation oncologists and physicists gaining expertise through collaborations with centers in Asia and Europe. The new facility will enable Mayo Clinic to conduct clinical trials and further research into the efficacy of carbon ion therapy for various cancer types. This research will explore new and expanded treatment options, including combining different kinds of therapies.

The construction of the new facility at Mayo Clinic in Florida is already underway, with the first carbon ion treatments expected to be available by 2028. Adding carbon ion therapy to Mayo Clinic’s patient care offerings will enable the organization to continue providing comprehensive and cutting-edge cancer care. This will allow Mayo Clinic’s care teams to continue offering patients access to a full spectrum of treatment options, enhancing the ability to tailor therapies to individual needs and improving outcomes for patients.

The post What Is Carbon Ion Therapy? A Look Inside the Cancer Treatment appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Across the globe, we are providing 21st century healthcare in 20th century buildings. Not only do we need new and better spaces, but we must also rethink how we use space in healthcare, including how to merge inpatient, outpatient and digital care into a platform model of healthcare that is seamless, dynamic and self-improving.

A History of Transformation

Mayo Clinic has a rich history of inventing and reinventing the future of exceptional, Category-of-One care for patients. For example, in 1928, Mayo Clinic opened the Plummer Building, which fostered the integrated group practice of medicine by bringing together multiple medical specialists under one roof and facilitating medical record sharing via an innovative pneumatic tube system. Three decades later, Mayo Clinic studied and developed a novel concept at the time — the radial or “circular” nursing unit, with a central desk surrounded by patient rooms that enabled the care team to see all the patients, all of the time. These design concepts became models for how people practiced medicine in the United States.

Today, we continue to lead patient-centered healthcare transformation through our Bold. Forward. strategy, which importantly includes designing space for the future of care. Launched five years ago, Bold. Forward. aims to discover more Cures for our patients; Connect people and data to create new scalable knowledge; and Transform our entire healthcare system from a linear pipeline model to an entirely new model — a scalable, highly collaborative platform model. But to accomplish Bold. Forward., we must also think creatively about the space we need for our patients, our staff, and a transformed healthcare system.

Bold. Forward. Unbound.

Bold. Forward. Unbound. is our vision for the future of healthcare infrastructure and represents a once-in-three-generations investment across all our sites. Physical transformation is already underway at Mayo Clinic in Florida, Mayo Clinic in Arizona, and Mayo Clinic Health System, and the Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester plan was unveiled last fall.

The goal of Bold. Forward. Unbound. is not simply different buildings, but radically better spaces that bring teams and patients together in an environment that is designed to transform the patient experience, advance teamwork, create more cures, and improve outcomes.

The physical spaces where today’s care teams work, conduct research and train future healthcare leaders are central components of what makes exceptional care possible, but they are now largely obsolete. To create the future of care, we must invest in physical infrastructure that takes into account the evolving needs of patients with serious or complex care needs, their families and healthcare staff.

Imagine a healthcare world where a patient’s hospital room is an integral part of their care team, where physical infrastructure is complemented by artificial intelligence and robotics operating in the background to provide added support for clinicians and nurses so they can spend more time with their patients. Bold. Forward. Unbound. brings to life this future state of care where a patient’s room sees, hears, anticipates and reacts to their needs alongside their care team to re-imagine the experience of healthcare.

Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester

Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester is our biggest, most ambitious and most forward-looking vision for healthcare physical infrastructure. Like the Plummer Building in 1928 and the circular unit in 1957, Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester will serve as an inspiration for the future of healthcare.

At first glance, it may appear that we’re simply constructing a few new buildings in Rochester. But inside those buildings lies transformational change that will blur the lines across hospital, clinic and digital care to meet patients’ needs — wherever they are.

Flexible Spaces With People at the Center

Our new buildings, designed in collaboration with Foster + Partners and CannonDesign, are being built with a universal, flexible grid to allow the building to adapt to change over time. We will provide patients with personalized arrival experiences tailored to their specific healthcare needs, with spaces designed to transition patients intuitively among diagnostic imaging suites, to operating rooms, to patient rooms throughout their stay. Spaces will also adapt seamlessly to digital, outpatient, inpatient and post-hospital care needs as they arise, allowing the care team to personalize care for patients and their loved ones.

Our new spaces will include built-in resources to deliver next-generation care experiences. For example, we are designing spaces that integrate automation to streamline daily tasks, such as reminding hospitalized patients about their upcoming tests as well as incorporating predictive AI tools to help clinicians make early diagnoses. With these efforts, our patient rooms and other spaces truly enable better healthcare and become another member of the care team.

Of course, we also want our spaces to be warm and welcoming for patients, who often come to us at vulnerable times of their lives, and therefore we have created “neighborhoods” that will serve as “home” while they are receiving care. Neighborhoods bring familiarity to our spaces, conveniently locating essential services in close proximity to patients and care teams to minimize trips across campus and better support our collaborative model of care. Neighborhoods will also feature natural materials, sunlight, winter gardens and interconnected public spaces to create a calming atmosphere that supports a patient’s overall well-being.

Arizona. Bold. Forward: Building Synergies Between Research and Education

Each Mayo Clinic campus has unique needs based on the regions it serves, but all share a common mission to serve as a beacon of hope and healing to those in need. Mayo Clinic launched Arizona. Bold. Forward. to better serve the growing complex care needs of the Southwest, a project that not only doubled the campus size to accommodate more patients but is also transforming care delivery and research and education capabilities.

Like in Rochester, Arizona. Bold. Forward. is adding remote care platforms for chronic and acute care needs and advanced AI protocols to better predict and more reliably treat complex and serious illnesses.

Additionally, a new Integrated Education and Research Building will fuse medical education and research, bringing scientists side by side with learners to find new answers while simultaneously training future healthcare leaders. Within this new space, we are integrating technology to provide next-generation medical training, including organizing our multidisciplinary teams around common research focus areas and sharing critical technologies such as augmented and virtual reality training scenarios and 3D-model rendering for radiographic images and biological specimens. With the new building in close proximity to Discovery Oasis and the Arizona State University Health Futures Center, Mayo Clinic in Arizona’s campus will transform into a highly collaborative innovation hub focused on finding new cures and growing the workforce of tomorrow.

Mayo Clinic in Florida: Advancing cancer care, creating a healing environment

Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Florida is creating a smart campus through human-centered spaces that expand patient care capabilities, biomedical research and education, all connected through integrated technology.

With an added 750,000 square feet by 2026, Mayo Clinic in Florida’s campus will transform into a member of the patient’s care team. Patient rooms will be meticulously designed to promote healing, connection and adaptability, equipped with ambient clinical intelligence and wireless vitals monitoring to allow care teams to gather just-in-time clinical information with minimal disruptions. Technology will become nearly invisible to the patient, allowing care teams to maintain personal connections to their patients while having access to resources that continuously improve outcomes.

To further create a healing environment, our designs will increase sunlight in patient rooms by over 80%, and rooms will be equipped to react to patient preferences, such as voice commands to adjust room lighting or temperature. Behind the scenes, care teams will benefit from added automation to support clinical documentation, supply needs and fall-risk notifications.

As we look to better meet the needs of our patients with novel treatment options, a new integrated oncology building will give patients more access to cutting-edge cancer treatment options through proton beam therapy and North America’s first carbon ion therapy unit. Located near other hematology and oncology services, the new building will further integrate cancer care on the Florida campus to create a more seamless, coordinated care experience.

Mayo Clinic Health System: Transforming Community Care

We must think innovatively about what the future of healthcare looks like for everyone, regardless of physical location. Community-based patients deserve access to timely, specialty care, delivered by compassionate care teams equipped with Category-of-One resources and technology. Expansions at our community-based facilities, Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse and Mankato, will transform local healthcare and set the standard for community health systems nationally through future-oriented spaces designed for convenience, safety and quality.

Within these new spaces, patients will have connected care experiences tailored to their unique needs, including virtual access to subspecialty clinicians at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, to get the answers they need without leaving their communities. Patients and staff also will feel more connected to care plans with the addition of smartboards in patient rooms, virtual nursing resources and digital technology to enhance workflows.

A new 96-bed tower in La Crosse, Wisconsin, will bring an unparalleled care experience to community-based patients, integrating these new technologies alongside design enhancements aimed at elevating the overall experience for both patients and staff.

At Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato, three new recently opened floors are modernizing the patient care environment through automation, noise-reducing architectural enhancements, larger spaces for patient care and staff support, and more. Both projects are bringing transformed environments required to best serve our community patients with consistent and connected care experiences that preserve human interaction while leveraging novel technologies that are advancing cures.

Harmonizing Physical and Digital for the Future of Care

Physical infrastructure and digital capabilities must work together to create the future of care. By successfully integrating the two, we can create a higher-quality, more sustainable healthcare system that will better serve everybody.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn. 

The post Reimagining Healthcare Buildings appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

This installation marks one of the final projects of Arizona. Bold. Forward. and represents the future of patient care at Mayo Clinic.  

One of the largest capital expansion projects in Mayo Clinic history, Arizona. Bold. Forward. doubled the size of the Phoenix campus in just four years, significantly increasing its capacity to meet the needs of patients. 

The 7T MRI is the first and only MRI of this magnetic field strength used for patient care in Arizona. With its addition, all three Mayo Clinic campuses now have the cutting-edge technology. Mayo Clinic in Minnesota became the first center in North America to use clinical 7T MRI in late 2017, and a second 7T scanner was installed at Mayo Clinic in Florida in 2021.  

Advanced Diagnostic Applications 

The 7T MRI scanner provides more than twice the magnetic field strength of a conventional 3-Tesla (3T) scanner to deliver ultrafine image resolution of the head and extremities.  

MRI — magnetic resonance imaging — scanners use magnetic fields, measured in teslas, and radio waves to create detailed images of organs and tissues in the body. The magnetic field strength, in part, determines the amount of anatomical detail that can be obtained in the images. 

The 7T MRI noninvasively reaches deep into the body, allowing physicians to see anatomical details that were previously invisible, leading to more accurate diagnoses and targeted treatment plans.  

For example, the 7T MRI can reveal subtle brain lesions caused by trauma or multiple sclerosis that might be missed by conventional MRI scans. It can also provide more detailed images of knee cartilage and other tissues, improving noninvasive diagnoses. 

As an early adopter of this technology, Mayo Clinic pioneered the development of advanced clinical imaging protocols, exploiting the high magnetic field strength to push the boundaries of our ability to detect subtle pathologies. Mayo Clinic was also central to efforts to develop safety procedures for this technology. 

Mayo Clinic is one of the few centers that routinely uses 7T MRI to assess individuals with epilepsy. This advanced imaging technology can identify epileptogenic lesions that 3T MRI often misses, increasing the chances of the patient achieving seizure freedom.  

Enhancing Neurological Research 

Beyond its immediate clinical applications, the 7T MRI allows Mayo Clinic neuroradiologists to develop tools to assess patients with unprecedented accuracy. 

The 7T MRI is instrumental in research efforts aimed at understanding and treating conditions like transient global amnesia (TGA) and leukoencephalopathy. 

Researchers used 7T MRI to identify a persistent lesion in the hippocampus of a patient with TGA eight months post-episode. This finding suggests TGA may cause more enduring brain changes than previously believed.  

7T MRI has also been used to detect specific brain calcifications in a young woman with a family history of colony-stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF1R)-related leukoencephalopathy. These abnormalities, missed by regular neurological exams and 3T MRI, led to better treatment decisions and referral to a clinical trial. 

Mayo Clinic has also developed 7T MRI protocols for these conditions: 

• A novel imaging protocol and stereotactic head frame localizer was developed to perform treatment planning for deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrode placement. 

• A novel protocol allows for imaging neuromelanin in the brain, aiding in Parkinson's disease detection by identifying reduced neuromelanin levels and elevated iron content. 

• High-resolution 7T MRI can detect specific changes in the motor cortex, facilitating earlier diagnosis and treatment intervention for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). 

Use of the 7T MRI scanner underscores Mayo Clinic's unwavering commitment to providing patients with the most advanced diagnostic and treatment options available. This technology empowers physicians to deliver exceptional care and paves the way for groundbreaking discoveries that will shape the future of medicine. 

The post Mayo Clinic’s 7-Tesla MRI Scanner Is Setting a New Standard for Patient Care  appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.