How Automation Gives Back One of Healthcare’s Most Valuable Resources – Time

Intelligent automation — a blend of artificial intelligence, digital tools and robotics — is already easing administrative burdens and improving patient access to care. In this article first published on the World Economic Forum website, Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, highlights the need for collaboration among providers, government agencies and tech companies to enhance patient outcomes and staff well-being.

Within healthcare, there are few, if any, resources more precious and closely managed than time. As many healthcare providers worldwide will tell you, there is simply not enough time to care for all their patients with quality and compassion and, simultaneously, complete mandatory tasks, such as record reviews, documentation and insurance paperwork. Globally, the source of this problem is twofold: an ongoing shortage of healthcare workers, including nurses, physicians and all allied health staff, and an increase in demand due to an aging global population with growing healthcare needs. Both are compounded by an antiquated underlying architecture in healthcare that inhibits innovation and transformative solutions. 

Highly developed countries are not immune from these challenges. In the U.S., the shortage is expected to reach 187,000 physicians and 63,000 registered nurses in the coming decades, with even more staff needed to meet unaddressed healthcare issues. In France, more physicians are retiring than starting their practice. In England, 10% of nursing and 7% of physician positions are vacant, while less than a third of National Health Service staff feel their hospital is adequately staffed to provide excellent care. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many patients around the world saw longer and growing wait times for care. 

At the same time, digital tools intended to create greater efficiency and save time have, in some cases, become an added source of administrative burden for care teams. With doctors reporting a nearly 60-hour workweek in a physically and mentally demanding profession, it is little wonder that almost 50% also report at least one symptom of burnout. 

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Fixing Healthcare’s Time Constraints Requires Innovative, Platform-Based Solutions 

While we must revamp and shorten educational curricula to recruit and train more healthcare workers, hiring and training alone cannot solve this global shortfall of healthcare workers. Healthcare organizations — alongside governments and other agencies — must find innovative ways to reduce the administrative burden, while expanding access to lifesaving care and expertise to patients in need. 

We have previously advocated for a global move to a platform model of healthcare. As part of that move, few tools have shown as much promise to address these problems as intelligent automation, a combination of digital tools, robotics and AI that streamline or even eliminate human involvement in administrative processes. When these tools are deployed within a platform model of care, we have already seen how they can reduce healthcare workers’ overall workload, while providing greater access for patients. 

In addition, the next generation of powerful emerging AI tools — particularly agentic AI, a dynamic class of AI that can autonomously carry out tasks with high fidelity — is expanding what was previously possible by creating automated AI tools that are dynamic, responsive and adaptable to each user’s needs. Agentic AI — paired with existing automation technology — has the potential to streamline administrative tasks while extending healthcare workers’ expertise to reach more patients without additional strain, enabling the most essential task of any healthcare system: providing direct care to patients. 

Around the World, Health Systems Are Using Intelligent Automation to Save Time 

Because no nation or health system is immune to workforce shortages or time-constrained staffing, many are turning to innovative automation tools to streamline processes, improve worker experiences and make healthcare careers more attractive overall.  

In Taiwan, where a single-payer system with complex rules requires significant work to accurately submit expenses, researchers have used software robots to reduce the time it takes to complete these tasks by 31%. In the U.S., autonomous robotic vehicles deliver meals and pharmaceuticals in hospitals and clinics, freeing up care teams to focus on patients instead of time-consuming logistical details. In Belgium, AI-tools help streamline complex procedures, like cardiac catheterization, by analyzing imagery before and after procedures and prepopulating reports. Ghana, which faces a shortage of providers, particularly radiologists, is home to a tech startup that has developed an AI-powered diagnostic tool that is effective at diagnosing conditions like cardiomegaly and can do so more accurately than many trained professionals — expanding access to critical diagnostic care to patients while off-loading tasks from overstretched radiologists. 

At Mayo Clinic, our physicians and researchers have shown how AI-powered automation can save time while improving outcomes for head and neck radiotherapy. With our partners, we are also refining AI ambient listening technology to automate documentation for nurses, while robots are assisting in routine tasks, like linen delivery. Yet, it is also clear that we — and the entire global healthcare system — are just at the beginning of realizing the benefits of intelligent automation for our patients and staff. 

To Maximize the Impact of Intelligent Automation Tools, Healthcare Must Act Now 

As we look to the future, rapidly developing automation technology holds even greater potential to positively transform how healthcare workers provide care and how patients receive it. For example, fully realized agentic AI tools can provide personalized high-level services to patients, helping them navigate complex health systems and processes. For physicians and providers, these tools can likewise extend their expertise and insight through agentic digital twins that reliably and accurately answer patient questions on diagnoses, outcomes and results. Digital pathology and radiology platforms can extend the reach of urgent diagnostic services to underserved populations and even entire nations, while purpose-built infrastructure will allow for greater robotic automation of routine tasks. 

However, none of these possibilities are necessarily assured. While moving forward without a patient-centered approach is dangerous and will lead to harm, so is delaying moving forward to wait for complete clarity. Patients and healthcare workers need nonincremental solutions today. The health sector must, without delay, take ownership of this opportunity, lead in establishing codes of conduct for intelligent automation, and partner with automation innovators and government agencies to co-create solutions and develop pragmatic regulations. Patient and healthcare worker voices must remain central to how these tools are developed, validated and deployed into the healthcare workstream for the maximal and equitable benefit of all. The time to lead is now. 

The post How Automation Gives Back One of Healthcare’s Most Valuable Resources – Time appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Falling behind her siblings was an early sign of the condition that would soon shape her life. "I remember running after my brothers and I couldn't keep up. Then I would turn blue,” she says. 

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one in her family with heart problems. By her early teens, Kataliya experienced the devastating death of her younger sister, who passed away suddenly from a heart condition — a loss that underscored the urgency of Kataliya's own. From then on, her life became one of medications and caution, aimed at keeping her alive. 

Despite these efforts, Kataliya’s health began to decline in 2020. "I felt like I was suffocating," she recalls. That led her to Mayo Clinic, where she worked with transplant cardiologist Rohan Goswami, M.D., to find a lasting solution. 

Defying the Odds 

Kataliya had a difficult journey ahead of her. According to Dr. Goswami, the challenge in her case was twofold. First, she had a specific heart condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, that elevated the risks associated with using any support devices. Additionally, she had a high level of antibodies in her bloodstream, further complicating her situation. 

“I came in at 97% antibodies, which means my systems would fight 97 out of 100 hearts,” Kataliya says. “Basically, I had a very small chance they could find a match [for a transplant]. How could they find that one heart of millions that I would not reject?” 

The Future of AI and Transplants 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a powerful ally in organ transplantation, paving the way for safer and more effective outcomes. "It takes lots of patients over lots of treatment pathways and helps us identify the best one for the person sitting in front of me,” Dr. Goswami says.

Kataliya’s case is a prime example. According to Dr. Goswami, AI added a new dimension in helping her medical team understand her risks and gauge her potential for a successful match before her transplant. But that’s only scratching the surface of AI’s transformative role in transplantation. 

"I think organ matching, patient survival and also looking at the ability to predict who's a high-risk or a low-risk patient are going to change the landscape of transplant in the next couple of years,” says Dr. Goswami. 

At Mayo Clinic, research is already underway to explore the full potential of AI’s capabilities in transplantation. Dr. Goswami explains that advanced algorithms are helping researchers “understand and identify the factors that may be playing a more significant role in a patient's risk for infection, cancer or rejection” — insights that extend far beyond the traditional models clinicians have relied on for over 20 years. 

"We are using AI to redefine our understanding of chronic disease, potentially preventing the need for organ replacement therapy altogether,” he says. 

Living Life Out Loud 

On June 6, 2023, Kataliya got her perfect match. 

After receiving her life-changing transplant, she could, as she puts it, finally start "living life out loud." She even began running — an achievement that had previously seemed completely out of reach. "It feels very powerful," she says. 

We are using AI to redefine our understanding of chronic disease, potentially preventing the need for organ replacement therapy altogether.

— Rohan Goswami, M.D.

For Kataliya, AI was more than just a technology — it was a lifeline. Thanks to the power of AI and her team's experience, she’s living a life she once thought impossible. And for the future of transplant patients, AI offers the hope of a similar second chance.

The post A Perfect Match: AI’s Role in Kataliya’s Heart Transplant Journey appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Time Is Brain

In stroke care, time is brain.

From the moment a stroke begins until clinicians have restored normal blood flow in the brain, the clock is ticking. Every minute can mean the death of millions of neurons — our brain’s fragile, critical cells that control our every function. But it takes time to determine if a patient is experiencing a stroke and, if so, what kind of stroke they are having, before any treatment can be given. When it comes to improving stroke care, anything that can speed up the process of identifying and addressing the condition can have an enormous impact on patient recovery.

Enter: Artificial intelligence (AI). At Mayo Clinic, clinicians are using AI algorithms to speed up stroke detection and diagnosis and coordinate care teams to get patients the treatment they need sooner, saving millions of brain cells and improving patient outcomes.

A Ticking Clock

For Sophia Chan, that clock started ticking at approximately 2:05 on a Thursday afternoon in February 2022. It was just another day at her high-pressure job as a television producer when she began to experience a severe headache.

She explains that she doesn’t remember what happened that day — she only knows what she’s heard from her husband and the first responders. “Normally I would just go lie down for a bit and hope for the headache to go away,” Sophia says. “Apparently that day I did end up calling for help, and that’s what saved my life.”

By the time the first responders arrived just minutes later, she was unresponsive. She’d suffered a brain aneurysm while she was home alone. She was transported to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, just 15 minutes away.

While Sophia can’t remember anything from that day, her husband, Bobby Cullen, remembers it all in vivid, painful detail, recalling how he spoke to her just hours before a neighbor texted to ask about the ambulances outside their house.

He had been out of town for work, and it took him five hours to get back home. By the time he arrived, Sophia had already been in and out of surgery, and her status was still so tenuous that he wasn’t allowed into her room. He was finally allowed to see her in the earliest hours of the morning, when a clinician told him that it was time to say goodbye — Sophia wasn’t expected to survive for much longer. “I stood by her head for the next eight hours,” Bobby says. “The doctors tried to tell me to sit down, but I told them I wouldn’t sit down until she’d taken her last breath.”

Those eight hours turned into 36 hours, then 72. “On day 7, one of the doctors told me that I should go home and take care of myself,” says Bobby. Sophia continued to beat the odds, but she wasn’t out of the woods. It took almost three weeks for her care team to fully stabilize her condition. She can’t remember anything that happened during the first 21 days of her hospitalization.

Accelerating Diagnosis and Intervention

William Freeman, M.D., is focused on developing systems to better recognize and treat hemorrhagic strokes like Sophia’s, which are less common but often more debilitating than ischemic strokes. This is because ischemic strokes are the result of a blocked blood vessel, which leads to brain tissue injury as the cells are deprived of oxygen. Hemorrhagic strokes, caused by a ruptured blood vessel, result in rapid tissue damage as blood pools and increases pressure in the brain.

The treatments for the two types of strokes are different. Treatment for an ischemic stroke involves breaking up the blood clot, either with a medication or mechanically, so the blood can flow again. Hemorrhagic strokes are treated by providing medications to reverse any blood thinners the patient may be on, stop the bleeding, and relieve pressure on the brain to reduce tissue damage.

Knowing which kind of stroke a person is having is very important for choosing the right treatment. The wrong treatment could make a patient’s condition worse.

With the help of AI, a process that once could take half an hour or longer can now take just seconds. When a patient enters the emergency department with a suspected stroke, the first critical step is getting them a CT scan, generating detailed images of the patient’s brain using X-rays. Technicians then review the images looking for abnormalities in the brain to determine the location of the stroke and what type of stroke it is.

Now, an AI algorithm trained on a database of CT images from patients who have had strokes can rapidly scan hundreds of images and pull out the ones showing an abnormality. A technician reviews the relevant images and confirms the algorithm’s assessment. “A full CT and CT angiogram can be up to about 1,200 pictures,” says Dr. Freeman. “And before the software came into play, we’d be looking manually, slice by slice. It seems like it takes an eternity. AI can compress all those minutes down into seconds.”

After diagnosis comes intervention. Once the stroke has been located and clinicians determine its type, a care team is gathered to initiate the appropriate treatment. Dr. Freeman says AI can smooth this process too by sending automated messages to on-call clinicians as soon as a diagnosis is reached.

“Now, I’ll be in the CT control room, and while a technician is still processing the images, my smartphone pops up with a notification telling me that it’s go time,” he says. “It’s really a sight to behold.”

42 Million Neurons Saved With AI Intervention

30 MINUTES

Patient experiences ischemic stroke symptoms, such as slurred speech, numbness or weakness on one side of the body, or a sudden severe headache.

+20 MINUTES

EMT services are called for the patient, and patient is transported to hospital by EMTs.

+10 MINUTES

Patient arrives at hospital and is triaged in the emergency department. Care team suspects a stroke, and the patient is sent for a CT scan.

+10 MINUTES

Patient undergoes CT scan, and images are sent for review.

WITHOUT AI INTERVENTION

+25 MINUTES

CT images are manually reviewed by a technician to identify the stroke site and type. Care team is gathered to provide treatment. Patient receives treatment for stroke and begins the recovery process.

TOTAL TIME: 95 MINUTES

TOTAL NEURONS LOST: 180.5 MILLION

WITH AI INTERVENTION

+3 MINUTES

CT images are run through AI algorithm to identify stroke site and type. AI system alerts care team and directs them to the patient for treatment. Patient receives treatment for stroke and begins the recovery process.

TOTAL TIME: 73 MINUTES

TOTAL NEURONS LOST: 138.7 MILLION

The Difference a Minute Can Make

While AI tools have been well studied in ischemic stroke, they are less developed for use with hemorrhagic stroke, and that’s what Dr. Freeman wants to change.

“In a hemorrhagic stroke, patients get super sick, super fast,” he explains. “We estimate that patients lose between 6 million and 8 million brain cells per minute in just the first two hours. AI can help get patients out of the waiting room and into treatment much faster.”

Research has found that integrating AI into care for an ischemic stroke can save an average of about 22 minutes. With an estimated 1.9 million neurons lost during every minute of an ischemic stroke, this adds up to about 42 million neurons saved. With even more neurons lost per minute in hemorrhagic stroke, saving even just 10 minutes could have a dramatic impact on a patient’s recovery.

This technology, along with training and teamwork, is already having an impact in the clinic. “With AI implementation, we’re absolutely seeing a difference,” says Kacie Brewer, P.A.-C., who is a member of Sophia’s care team. “It’s getting patients the care they need faster by speeding up the diagnosis and pulling together the right team as quickly as possible.”

Sophia is acutely aware of the importance of those 10 minutes. Her proximity to Mayo Clinic and the AI algorithms that allowed the care team to find her aneurysm in minutes are likely the keys to her remarkable recovery. “I feel very fortunate to have been near Mayo Clinic,” she says. “The care I received was the best of the best.”

Her treatment at Mayo Clinic did more than just save her life. Many who survive hemorrhagic strokes go on to have significant lifelong disabilities. Two years after her stroke, Sophia is thriving, getting back to her active lifestyle of chasing around her sporty 9-year-old twins and easing into her yoga practice.

The family has moved to California to be closer to family, but still travels back to Jacksonville for follow-up visits.

Sophia’s case is remarkable because it’s still not yet the norm — most patients who suffer a hemorrhagic stroke do not experience a recovery like hers. Dr. Freeman believes that better AI algorithms and implementations, along with other cutting-edge technologies, can change that.

Sophia is now participating in the DISCOVERY study, a clinical trial leveraging Mayo Clinic’s expertise in neurology and neuroimaging to understand the risks of post-stroke cognitive impairment in diverse populations. She hopes that the research can lead to better outcomes for other patients like her.

And, every year, she and Bobby make a special effort to send treats and thank each of the doctors and nurses who provided so much of the care and support their family received during those first few impossible weeks.

“We really believe in Mayo Clinic’s values and mission,” says Bobby. “We could see how all of Sophia’s care was really a group effort, and it saved her life.”

The post Time Is Brain appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Dr. Shah has a distinguished 25-year career in National Institutes of Health-funded research on advanced liver disease. He brings expertise in basic science, artificial intelligence and clinical trials to this pivotal role. Mayo Clinic Magazine had the opportunity to discuss what led Dr. Shah to this position and his vision for the future of research at Mayo Clinic.

How do you balance and integrate your research responsibilities with clinical and leadership duties in your current role?

I focus a lot on creating a vision to work toward with my team and then supporting them so that our team members can all work together and support one another. I also want them to feel safe coming to me for help when they need it. I have so much gratitude for all the people who have helped me in my career, and I’m thankful to be able to support so many others through my leadership duties.

I’m thrilled to now be in the position of leading the Research shield at Mayo Clinic. At Mayo, our research and practice are intertwined. My medical practice helping patients each and every day connects directly to our expansive research program aimed at finding solutions that don’t exist today. Ultimately, building trust and creating supportive teams means that we can all work together to focus on our primary value: putting the needs of our patients first.

What brought you to Mayo Clinic?

It was serendipity. While I was doing my fellowship at Yale, my wife took a position in the Twin Cities. During that time, I came to Mayo for a month to do a transplant rotation, and that made all the difference for me. I met a lot of role models here at Mayo — Drs. Nick LaRusso, Greg Gores, Russ Wiesner. They introduced me to Mayo Clinic and demystified it for me.

When I had this chance to visit and to meet the people here, I saw that it was somewhere that would be a great fit for me and my work. Rochester has a wonderful mix of small-town charm and all the cosmopolitan aspects of a large intellectual city. It’s been a great place to raise kids, and Mayo Clinic has been an amazing place to work. It’s a testament to why I’ve been here for 25 years.

Our digital transformation is allowing us to better organize our data and apply algorithms to gain new insights into disease.

What excites you the most about the future of research at Mayo?

At Mayo Clinic, our research is about finding new cures for patients, especially for serious or complex diseases. That’s the principle that drives everything we’re doing. And from that, there are so many ways now that we can find new cures. We have our traditional pathways, led by our immensely talented research investigators — work in the lab discovering new insights into the biology of disease, designing and testing new therapies for treating those diseases, and bringing those new treatments into the clinic for patients.

Now we have many other ways, like Mayo Clinic Platform, where we can start to utilize patient data from around the world to reimagine how we do clinical trials. Artificial intelligence can speed up the pathway to drug discovery. Our digital transformation is allowing us to better organize our data and apply algorithms to gain new insights into disease. These are just some of the pathways that will help us get to more cures. All of these tools are accelerating the pace of research, and in turn the pace of treatments, and all of that will mean our patients get better therapies faster than ever before.

The post Reimagining the Future of Research With Vijay Shah, M.D. appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

It also affected her vision in an indirect way, making it difficult for her to process visual signals, yet she thought she was “fine.” “With cortical blindness, you can’t see, but you don’t know it,” Dr. Jones says. “None of her caregivers realized she couldn’t see. In my practice, I see that same sequence of events, leading from mild memory syndrome to denial to cortical blindness. It’s easy to predict how the brain will look in those cases.”

After receiving his M.D. in neurology years later and starting his research lab, Dr. Jones named a phenotype of the disease after his grandmother, the “MFB variant.” The name is used internally for teaching purposes.

A Human Touch

For decades, Alzheimer’s and dementia have been the subjects of intense study. Today, Dr. Jones and researchers of his caliber can recognize brain changes as neurodegenerative conditions progress. By spotting patterns linked to a particular condition, healthcare professionals can identify dementia before symptoms become clinical, allowing early interventions.

But there are limits to what even the world’s top scientists can observe — limits that Dr. Jones is helping overcome as the director of artificial intelligence in the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Jones heads the Neurology Artificial Intelligence Program (NAIP), which helps clinicians diagnose neurological disorders through pattern recognition.

A significant advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) is its ability to find patterns in datasets with more inputs than any physician can consider. AI doesn’t replace human knowledge or physician expertise — it strengthens them.

“If physicians are aided by a technology that tells them about a pattern, they can provide better care,” Dr. Jones says. The Mayo Clinic Cloud includes some 16,000 brain images dating back about 15 years. That’s a lot of fodder for pattern recognition.

Dr. Jones sees a parallel between how physicians think when diagnosing and the work of his NAIP team. Physicians traditionally use tests and questions to spot patterns that fit what they know and have observed about diseases. AI does this too, but faster and with the ability to capture a vastly larger quantity of data. In building the NAIP’s tools, Dr. Jones and his team strive to capture that synergy.

“When we consult experts for diagnosis, they often tell a story about the outcome of a case where a patient had a particular feature,” he says. “That’s usually what solves the problem. The algorithm digitizes that process.”

Working with AI has clarified Dr. Jones’ thoughts about brain aging and degeneration and vice versa.

If physicians are aided by a technology that tells them about a pattern, they can provide better care.

“You want AI to recognize patterns, to speak and to reason. Degenerative diseases can take those abilities away from people,” he says. “All these things that we want to build into AI systems are things brains do. So they all inform each other.”

A Change of Direction

Little did Dr. Jones know early in life that his route would take him to the intersection of the human mind and AI. Instead, he trained as a thespian in high school, receiving a theater scholarship. But two transformative moments planted a seed in Dr. Jones’ life.

The first came when he went to a bookstore and accidentally purchased a copy of “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid,” by Douglas Hofstadter and decided to read it anyway. The 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book wove together music, art, math and the then-distant possibility that AI could mimic human thought.

The second inclination of his fascination with the human mind came from a script he helped write based on characters from “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” by Oliver Sacks.

Dr. Jones played a person who lacked awareness of the body’s position in space, known as proprioception.

“I actually didn’t understand the condition at the time, so I didn’t play the role very well,” he recalls.

A Shift to Science

It was at Georgetown University that he became fascinated with neuroimaging and brain networks. He grasped the immense potential of machine learning technology and its ability to detect patterns.

After medical school, Dr. Jones joined Mayo Clinic and worked in the brain-imaging and cognitive-aging laboratory of Clifford Jack Jr., M.D., which further brought his scientific passions into focus.

From the day he arrived at Mayo, Dr. Jones has taken Mayo’s core value to heart: “The patient’s needs come first.” This value, he says, guides his teams in building systems that work well for patients.

“Physicians at Mayo now stand shoulder to shoulder with data scientists and software engineers. We understand enough about each others’ disciplines to speak a common language as a care team,” says Dr. Jones.

Dr. Jones is working toward a compassionate way to predict multiple neurological disorders based on a single brain scan. The current diagnostic process often requires numerous blood samples and other uncomfortable procedures. The new method offers many advantages to the patient: less travel, less time and expense, less invasive measures, and an earlier diagnosis.

Brain scans are just the beginning of AI’s usefulness. Dr. Jones sees a future where other diagnostic data can be digitized and overlaid on the same platform. That includes videos, voice samples, eye tracking, cognitive tests and more.

And who better to leverage AI than an organization world-renowned for its patient-centered approach? “Change should be led by people who understand the patient’s needs,” says Dr. Jones. And shoulder to shoulder, his multidisciplinary care team does just that.

Change should be led by people who understand the patient’s needs.

The post A Cognitive Compass: AI and the Aging Brain appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

It’s about Mayo Clinic and the future of medicine through the lens of artificial intelligence (AI), one they’re helping kick-start through a sizable philanthropic gift to transform the future of healthcare under Mayo Clinic’s direction.

“The Odells aren’t doing any of this because they want to be liked or recognized,” says Richard Gray, M.D., CEO of Mayo Clinic in Arizona. “Their focus is on, ‘How do we have a positive impact on as many people as possible?’ And they want to encourage others to join them in their efforts.”

Away From the Camera

While the Odells are not asking for this spotlight, oh, what a story it is.

Linda moved to Southern California with $500 and a Dodge Dart to her name, starting work making $90 a week at what was then known as Security Pacific National Bank. She caught the attention of those in the entertainment industry along the way. There’s even a picture in their home featuring Linda on the set of “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.

Meanwhile, Stephen drove a truck, delivering fish in the Los Angeles area as a young man. He struck up a relationship with the Tober family, who owned what was then a small family company known as Sugar Foods.

Donald Tober asked Stephen to work for him and had a proposition: help distribute a sugar substitute product known as Sweet’N Low. Donald grabbed a cocktail napkin and drew a map of the United States with the Mississippi River in the middle. With one arrow to the West, he labeled it Stephen’s territory. Donald took the Eastern United States for himself.

“Within weeks of accepting the job in 1969, the government banned cyclamates, which was the sweetener ingredient in Sweet’N Low at the time,” Stephen recalls. “Therefore, the company had no sales.”

Sweet’N Low changed its formula, and the associated distribution company grew over the ensuing decades due to Stephen’s and Donald’s grit.

“That’s where we started — and today, Sugar Foods products are consumed more than 1,500 times every second across the globe,” Stephen says.

Loving Humankind

Linda and Stephen met on a blind date later in their lives, and for more than 15 years they have been a constant at each other’s side. When searching for the best healthcare in Arizona, friends pointed them to Mayo Clinic. A routine physical for Stephen discovered prostate cancer.

Linda’s first husband died of prostate cancer. It remains a painful milestone in her life that she didn’t want to repeat.

After Stephen’s cancer care, we looked for a philanthropic journey to go on. Mayo Clinic felt like the right place to give.

— Linda Odell

“I was not going to lose Stephen,” she says. At Mayo Clinic, Stephen was an ideal candidate for proton beam therapy, a form of radiation that reduces the risk of damage to healthy tissues surrounding tumor cells. Studies have suggested that proton therapy may cause fewer side effects than traditional radiation, since doctors can better control where the proton beams deliver their energy.

“At Mayo, obviously the core principle is the patient comes first,” Stephen says. “Every interaction I had with someone at Mayo was welcoming — from volunteers to schedulers. Everybody that took my hand and walked me through the waiting room to every doctor that I saw on follow-up — I’ve never had a bad interaction ever.”

But the Odells saw more people in need all around than even Mayo could help. What could they do for people beyond the waiting rooms preparing for cancer treatment? What about those across the United States or across the globe?

“Dr. Gray was the first person we went to when we asked, ‘What can we do?’ He told us about the burgeoning role of AI in healthcare. And I said, ‘That’s it.’ That was all it took,” Stephen says.

Those plans are part of Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. strategic vision to Cure by accelerating discovery, translation and delivery of more cures for both chronic and acute diseases; Connect people with data to create new knowledge and deliver scalable, end-to-end solutions; and Transform healthcare by creating its first scalable, AI-enabled care transformation platform.

“After Stephen’s cancer care, we looked for a philanthropic journey to go on,” Linda says. “Mayo Clinic felt like the right place to give.”

Building a Posse

Stephen’s favorite movie is “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The 1969 iconic Western follows a band of outlaws in the 1890s in Wyoming with a posse of law enforcement on their heels after a botched train robbery.

The metaphor appeals to the Odells, building a group to relentlessly pursue a goal. But this one isn’t a Hollywood script about law enforcement officials and thieves. It’s a much more serious and even more ambitious goal than a timeless blockbuster — democratizing healthcare through artificial intelligence to help as many people as possible. And the Odells are asking people to join their drive to change the world behind Mayo Clinic’s efforts.

“This is a place where Mayo Clinic has to step forward as a leader,” Dr. Gray says. “Many of us can see the promise of AI. But it’s hard to innovate. And it’s even harder to make sure that those innovations can reach broad populations.

“If we approach it as a leader, creating a platform from which all can benefit, that is a much different proposition than saying we’re going to harness this technology to do something on our own for just our patients. The Odells immediately grasped our work in AI. That benefit to society really resonates with them.”

Mayo Clinic has more than 250 AI algorithms in various stages of development and use, from predicting serious conditions before they cause symptoms to a digital healthcare assistant that uses generative AI to allow a clinician to quickly ask questions and pull relevant information from a patient’s electronic health record.

Importantly, Mayo Clinic built Mayo Clinic Platform that allows for impactful and validated AI models to be created and be made available widely so AI solutions can benefit more of the United States and the world — just as the Odells want to see happen.

“We’re harnessing the innovative power of so many of our physicians, scientists, nurses and other experts at Mayo Clinic to fuel the AI revolution safely and responsibly,” Dr. Gray says. “But we’re doing so along with many other values-aligned organizations and innovators, so the network effects create impact at a scale that isn’t possible if any of us were doing it alone.”

The Future of Care

A key figure in Mayo’s AI efforts is radiologist Bhavik Patel, M.D., M.B.A., who spearheads Mayo Clinic in Arizona’s AI work. Dr. Patel’s commitment to AI grew out of the same dedication as the Odells’: He wants to make the biggest difference for the largest number of patients possible.

“Not everyone has access to Mayo Clinic,” Dr. Patel says. “Imagine if we could use these types of tools to extend the Mayo model of care beyond our clinic walls.

“If we’re really going to democratize the care we give, the future of healthcare should be one where hospitals are largely empty, because we’re using these types of tools to provide so much immersive care up front. Patients will be treated in their homes, and your clinician will be able to communicate with and care for you without ever setting your foot in a hospital.”

We’re harnessing the innovative power of so many of our physicians, scientists, nurses and other experts at Mayo Clinic to fuel the AI revolution safely and responsibly.

— Richard Gray, M.D.

And the Odells see the horizon shifting for how care is delivered for many people.

“The gift we gave is only the beginning, and we want others to join us,” Stephen says. “We want everyone to know the importance of supporting projects like these so that by 2030 over 3 billion people will have access to AI to address health issues.

“By investing in AI advancements, we can slow down what I call sick care and truly make it healthcare. Linda and I believe AI is going to play a huge role getting us to that point. Our footprints will fade away like steps in snow, but we hope we made a difference that far outlives us through our support of Mayo Clinic.”

The post Seeing A(I) Solution 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.

Open image in lightbox

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

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.

Open image in lightbox

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

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.

Open image in lightbox

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.

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.

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.