With her plans for her future pushed aside, Brescia's focus was now on her health and hope. It's an unexpected chapter facing an increasing number of adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer.

Brescia's Dream

At 4 years old, it was clear Brescia had a flare for creativity. She readily admits she was never one to miss an opportunity to play dress-up, draw pictures or tell a story. 

"Being creative has always been at the core of what I do," she says. Early on, she developed a love for photography and videography. Brescia's dream was to pursue a career that allowed her to put her creative energy to work. 

After high school, Brescia's passion led her to college to study film and media production. She even traveled to Italy to study abroad. After her Italian adventure, Brescia returned to the U.S. to finish college. First, she went to her doctor for her annual checkup. 

 "I lived a really healthy, balanced lifestyle," says Brescia. "My doctor found swelling on the side of my neck. I hadn't noticed the swelling and didn't have any symptoms." Brescia was sent for an ultrasound followed by a surgical biopsy. 

The Diagnosis

The surgical biopsy revealed Brescia had Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer. "Being diagnosed with cancer at 20 years old was so scary, and I wouldn't wish that on any 20-year-old," says Brescia. "I think about the young version of me who just found out she had cancer, and I just wish I could give her a hug." 

Hodgkin lymphoma is a type of cancer that begins in the lymphatic system, which is part of the immune system. Brescia says the news came as a shock because she felt healthy and had no family history of cancer. "It felt like there was something I could have done to prevent it, but I learned that there's nothing I could have done," says Brescia. 

Navigating Life With Cancer

"When I was going through college and diagnosed with cancer, it was not what I was expecting," says Brescia. "Being a young adult with cancer was very hard and challenging. It is scary and can be very frightening." 

At 20 years old, Brescia falls into a group of patients referred to as adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer. AYA patients are between the ages of 15 and 39. Experts say AYA patients face a distinct set of challenges. 

"One of the reasons this age group is so important is based on their life stage — the things they uniquely face, like body image, disruption in school and work, financial challenges, feeling isolation," says Allison Rosenthal, D.O., with the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

Doctor and Cancer Survivor

Dr. Rosenthal knows firsthand the challenges AYA patients face. "I had leukemia in medical school. There were a lot of missed opportunities in my care to recognize the issues that I might face as a 24-year-old woman," explains Dr. Rosenthal. 

Putting her experience into action, Dr. Rosenthal championed Mayo Clinic's Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Program. The program is tailored to meet the unique needs of AYA patients to include medical care, fertility concerns, social and relationship issues, school and work concerns, and the personal and emotional impact of cancer in this age group. 

Brescia underwent about four months of chemotherapy treatment under the care of Dr. Rosenthal. "She did a beautiful job of explaining to me what the process was going to look like and what my treatment plan was going to look like. Because I'm so young, she walked me through the whole process," says Brescia.

Cancer-Free and Focused on the Future

After her cancer treatments, Brescia returned to college and got her degree. She started her own marketing agency providing social media management, videography, photography and brand development with her personal creative touch. She also celebrated her five-year anniversary of being cancer-free. 

"I also have a podcast called the Checkered Jaguar where I get to have incredible conversations with people, share their stories and connect people who may be going through similar challenges that I went through," says Brescia. "We're all in this journey together, and just being open and vulnerable with my journey — as challenging as it may be — I feel like it connects me to people all around the world." 

This article was originally published in Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center Blog. 

The post Navigating Life as a Young Adult With Cancer: Brescia’s Story appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

“Maya was young, but she was amazingly ahead of her years,” Dr. Dronca says. “She spoke about wanting to be a Mayo Clinic doctor from a very early age — before she was 4. She spoke many times about wanting to help people and follow in my footsteps.”

The experience of caring for her sick daughter — and the pain Maya endured making regular in-clinic visits — was a powerful force as Dr. Dronca imagined building a program like Cancer Care Beyond Walls.

Although she initially was unsure it would ever be safe to administer chemotherapy in patients’ homes, Dr. Dronca continually pushed toward the development of the program. She knew how much it would mean for patients and their families to have Mayo Clinic-quality care in their homes.

“She is a visionary,” says Jeremy Jones, M.D., a consultant in the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the medical director of Cancer Care Beyond Walls for Mayo Clinic Platform. “When she first told me about this, I said, ‘You’re dreaming! We can’t possibly pull this off.’ But she insisted we could. I’m personally just happy to be able to work with her and to be in her shadow. She’s a great person and an even better leader.”

Benefactor support was integral to the launch of Cancer Care Beyond Walls, and it fuels life-changing cancer research every day at Mayo Clinic. The Maya Dronca Foundation has given generously to Mayo Clinic as part of its mission to fund research that helps prevent, intercept and treat pediatric cancer — giving every child a chance for a happy, cancer-free life. The foundation was founded in 2021 on the strength of gifts that followed Maya’s passing.

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Cancer is a leading cause of death among children in the United States. Nationwide, approximately 15,000 children under the age of 20 are diagnosed each year.

“Maya would have wanted to help other kids who were going through what she went through,” Dr. Dronca says. “Raising funds for pediatric cancer is very meaningful to me.”

Dr. Dronca took up dance after losing Maya, on the recommendation of a friend who owned a dance studio. In each of the past two years, the Maya Dronca Foundation has held its Dancing with the Doctors fundraiser. Nearly all the entrants have been Mayo Clinic in Florida doctors.

“Dancing is such a medicine,” Dr. Dronca says. “The event was a way for me to bring some joy into something that is so sad and caused so much heartbreak.

“Many physicians want to raise funds to help our patients, and dancing got us out of our comfort zone as doctors.”

Dancing with the Doctors has gone even better than Dr. Dronca could have imagined. She has been amazed by the dedication her medical colleagues showed to dancing and the event.

In 2024, the Maya Dronca Foundation contributed $100,000 to Mayo Clinic.

“The day we were able to donate that first $100,000 was one of my best days in the last few years,” Dr. Dronca says. “So many people worked so hard to raise those funds. To think we’ve done our part to help this fight and know that Mayo Clinic will really put it to good use is an amazing feeling.”

Maya would have wanted to help other kids who were going through what she went through.

— Roxana Dronca, M.D.

The post Maya’s Legacy appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Dr. Heath’s dedication to helping her patients achieve better outcomes is contributing to meaningful progress in cancer research. It includes everything from spearheading a nationally recognized prostate cancer research program to launching innovative education and community outreach efforts. Since joining Mayo Clinic as the chair of the Department of Oncology in 2024, she has continued that mission — bringing her bold, patient-centered vision to life. In doing so, she’s delivering more answers and renewed hope for more people.

Dr. Heath sat down with Mayo Clinic Magazine to discuss her work in genitourinary cancers and her vision for the future. This interview has been edited for clarity. 

Why did you choose to join Mayo Clinic?

Mayo Clinic’s mission — the needs of the patient come first — has also been my guiding principle throughout my career. Mayo Clinic is a unique place where everyone is actively engaged in this mission. The abundance of resources available to all, not just a select few, is truly astounding. The collective commitment to the mission is palpable — it’s a unique and inspiring place to work. There's no other place like it, honestly, anywhere. In short, Mayo Clinic had me at “hello.”

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What initially sparked your interest in genitourinary oncology?

Thinking back to 2003, Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment options for prostate, kidney or bladder cancer were extremely limited. For an investigator like me interested in developing novel strategies, this represented a wide-open field.

For example, in advanced prostate cancer, mitoxantrone (approved in 1996) only improved quality of life, not overall survival. It wasn’t until 2004 that docetaxel became the first chemotherapy to demonstrate a survival benefit. Similarly, in 2003 kidney cancer treatment options were also limited. Interleukin-2 and interferon-alpha offered only modest improvements in overall survival. In bladder cancer, treatment consisted primarily of standard chemotherapy.

The potential to impact patients’ lives through clinical trials and drug development was immense. This is where I saw a critical need for dedicated investigators.

What are some of the most rewarding aspects of translating research findings into improved patient care?

I recall a consultation in 2003 with a gentleman suffering from advanced prostate cancer. At the time there were no available clinical trials. At that appointment, I remember his wife of nearly 60 years and the deep sadness of everyone in the room. The stark lack of treatment options was heartbreaking. Today, the abundance of treatment options underscores that cancer research saves lives. Knowing your community and sharing this message of hope with the public is incredibly important and rewarding.

Today, the abundance of treatment options underscores that cancer research saves lives. Knowing your community and sharing this message of hope with the public is incredibly important and rewarding.

— Elisabeth Heath, M.D.

What innovative approaches or technologies do you believe hold the greatest promise for improving treatment outcomes in genitourinary cancers?

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers enormous potential. AI-driven prognostic modeling in prostate cancer has been used for nearly two decades. However, the broader implementation of AI in this field is still in its early stages. While immune-based strategies haven’t been highly successful in advanced prostate cancer, AI can help us understand why and develop more effective approaches. AI also has a significant role to play in clinical trial development, patient selection and matching. This innovation will not only benefit patients with genitourinary cancers but also those with other solid tumors.

What does ‘patient experience’ mean to you personally, and how did that perspective develop through your own interactions in healthcare?

We excel in understanding the data as experts and communicating the science as leaders in the field. However, effectively communicating with patients and their families is equally important. If you can't articulate everything to the patient or the family, you haven’t done your job to the best of your ability.

The patient experience must include ensuring that patients understand the treatment process. This sometimes requires multiple visits to fully grasp the information. For example, to achieve broad representation in clinical trial enrollment, we’ve found that two to three, or even four, visits may be necessary. A patient may not be ready to participate on the first visit. It’s our responsibility to clearly articulate the information and meet patients where they are.

What is one thing you want people to understand about the importance of supporting cancer research and patient care?

Cancer research saves lives, and it requires resources. Every contribution, from $1 to $100 million, matters. This is everyone's fight to be engaged in. It's going to affect somebody you love, somebody you're related to. We’re all in the fight. The landscape of cancer treatment is constantly evolving because every effort we make, no matter how small, is contributing to progress. We must share the advancements we make at Mayo Clinic with the broader community.

The post Hope in the Fight: Dr. Elisabeth Heath and the Power of Cancer Research appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

A Phoenix Rising

The Phoenix represents Kelli 2.0. Kelli 2.0 is not the Kelli Bartol of a few years ago. Kelli says that version was “a very my-way-or-the-highway person.”

Instead, Kelli 2.0 has been thoroughly transformed since her cancer diagnosis. She’s still facing health challenges, but she’s also living each day to the fullest.

“I’m just happy to be here and not that type A personality anymore,” says Kelli, who lives in Golden Valley, Minnesota. “Everything I went through changed me at a core level.”

She says there’s a good chance she might not be around today without her Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center care team, led by Patrick McGarrah, M.D. They’ve provided Kelli with expert treatment for more than three years, helping her reach some important milestones.

When Kelli was originally diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in 2021, her goal was to live long enough to see her son, Aiden, graduate from high school. With Aiden currently in his second year of college, she has a new goal: watching Aiden’s college graduation.

“I can honestly say I love Dr. McGarrah,” she says. “He has been my partner in crime in this and so supportive. And I’m so lucky to live near Mayo Clinic. I’m only an hour and a half away. Everybody on the team is always wonderful. I’ve never had a bad experience at Mayo.”

Kelli started chemotherapy after her diagnosis at a local provider. She tolerated it well, until the day her face suddenly began to turn purple.

Soon after, Kelli found herself waking up from a coma — one she had been in for over a week.

“It turned out that I had blood clots in my heart, my lungs, my neck and my leg,” she says. “They tried everything they could to get rid of them without going in surgically and nothing worked. They had to open up my chest, and while they did that I had a bad reaction to something, swelled up, and they put me in a medically induced coma.”

As she awoke, Kelli was informed by her doctors she had two potential courses for treatment. The wrong one, they said, would kill her.

At that point, she turned back to Mayo for guidance on a life-or-death decision.

“Mayo Clinic did all the blood work and said, ‘This is what we think your platelet issue is and this is the way we’re going to treat it,’” she says.

“The treatment worked. There were other obstacles — there were about five close calls with death along the way — but they finally got me out of rehab and into chemotherapy. They were able to shrink the tumor enough so that we could do surgery to remove about 20 lymph nodes.”

Kelli, who has always had a creative streak, knew she needed to have an outlet as she healed from her surgery. Her options were limited by the effects of her illness — she had virtually no mobility after waking from the coma. Even today neuropathy has limited the dexterity in her hands and feet.

She decided to go with watercolors. She had taken a class and painted some prior to the cancer diagnosis, but now the inherent nature of watercolors resonated deeply with her.

“The beauty is in the imperfection,” she says. “I was such a perfectionist, and I needed something to help me let go. Watercolor doesn’t go perfectly. It’s liquid, it’s water. It goes where it wants to. Sometimes the color isn’t quite right, and you have to paint more or do it over.”

When Kelli completed her first work postsurgery, she gave it to Dr. McGarrah, who had become part of her care team during his oncology training and stayed with her as he transitioned onto faculty. The painting she gave him, shown above, is a watercolor of a phoenix that integrates images taken by pathologists of her tumors.

She transformed the tail feathers into peacock feathers, “so they have that big, bold, colorful part in the center,” and she replaced the centers of those peacock feathers with her cancer cells.

Kelli’s decision to incorporate her cancer in her art was made to represent how much her medical experience has changed her — from that demanding version of Kelli to Kelli 2.0, someone who knows she is diminished physically but feels she has become a better person.

“Kelli is an amazing woman and a very special patient for me personally,” Dr. McGarrah says. “She has been through almost unimaginable ups and downs, but always displays such grace, kindness and humor at each of our visits, whether the news is good or bad. It’s such a privilege to be a part of her cancer journey.”

I was such a perfectionist, and I needed something to help me let go.

— Kelli Bartol

The post A Phoenix Rising appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Seeing the Unseen

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest forms of the disease, with the American Cancer Society reporting a five-year survival rate of 13% in its 2024 statistics. It’s one of the lowest survival rates of any cancer, due in large part to the challenge of identifying pancreatic cancer early. But Mayo Clinic clinician-investigators have always believed it was possible to identify pancreatic cancer at a stage before symptoms become present — significantly boosting the odds of survival.

Time after time, early screening risk programs failed to make meaningful inroads. Individual review of patient imaging files is challenging — the human eye isn’t proficient at making the diagnosis that early, causing false-positive rates to soar.

But Mayo Clinic had a differentiator. It was a deep, longitudinal dataset dating back decades that included people who had been diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. The depth of the data meant that researchers could look back even earlier in patient records to review imaging taken 12 months or more prior to the discovery of cancer.

“The data allowed our teams to train an artificial intelligence (AI) model on that patient cohort that could pick up those early-stage pancreatic cancer cases with really high sensitivity and specificity,” says Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., who serves as medical director of the Strategy Department and medical director of Mayo Clinic’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Program. “It could do this at a very high accuracy — 97%.”

Our aspirations for AI are to impact patient outcomes.

— MATTHEW CALLSTROM, M.D., PH.D.

Dr. Callstrom says the work of Ajit Goenka, M.D.; Panos Korfiatis, Ph.D.; and Eric Williamson, M.D., and their teams showed that Mayo Clinic could determine whether a person had pancreatic cancer through applied AI at an early point in disease progression. Currently in the U.S., lung cancer causes the most cancer deaths, followed by colorectal cancer and then pancreatic cancer.

“We think we can shift the needle on that,” Dr. Callstrom says.

While discovery in medicine is challenging, translating those discoveries into clinical practice can be even more complex, according to Dr. Callstrom. This year, Mayo Clinic research scientists including Aadel Chadhuri, M.D., Ph.D.; Suresh Chari, M.D. (emeritus); Dr. Goenka; and Mark Truty, M.D., M.S., are testing the pancreatic cancer algorithm in the AI-PACED clinical trial, an area where Mayo Clinic excels. By focusing on patients at high risk for pancreatic cancer, particularly those with a family history of the disease, Mayo Clinic can evaluate new AI-driven approaches with more impact.

Mayo Clinic embeds scientists directly in clinical practice where they work alongside clinicians who understand the problems patients face and have access to the data. Together, they develop and test AI solutions in real time.

“That’s across the entire organization, and there are incredible discoveries being made all over,” he says.

FROM THERE TO HERE

Like many clinicians at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Callstrom’s background is varied and unique. He was a chemical engineering major at the University of Minnesota who stayed to do a Ph.D. in chemistry, followed by a postdoctoral opportunity at Harvard University.

From there, he began teaching chemistry at The Ohio State University. When one of his friends who was also a colleague at Ohio State was diagnosed with colon cancer, the experience deeply affected him.

“I became very motivated to try to impact patients’ lives. I went into medical school and was very fortunate to get into Mayo Medical School (now called Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine),” Dr. Callstrom says. “I’ve done all my training here, and my clinical emphasis is on treating patients with cancer.

“So, I do interventional oncology treating patients and trying to help them through a very difficult period in their life. And through the other aspects of my work in AI, we are hopefully developing cures for them.”

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In fact, Mayo Clinic has been looking at AI approaches for more than a decade, and its emergence in imaging over the most recent years dovetailed with Dr. Callstrom’s interests in figuring out how he could help the lives of as many patients as possible.

“He’s a pioneer in AI, working on machine learning back when most people weren’t thinking about that,” says Jim Rogers, CEO, Mayo Clinic Digital Pathology. “His singular focus has always been: ‘What can I do to improve care for folks?’

“There’s real courage and vision there. Because of him and others throughout the institution, Mayo now has more machine learning AI algorithms in actual practice — not just theory — than any other organization.”

ALREADY ACTIVE

Results from that early work are popping up all over Mayo Clinic, which has more than 60 AI models already deployed behind the scenes every day. This means that the solutions have been built and validated and are running automatically.

One area ripe for innovation is in cardiovascular medicine. Itzhak Zachi Attia, Ph.D.; Paul Friedman, M.D.; Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D., M.S.; and Peter Noseworthy, M.D., M.B.A., among a team of many others, are using EKG data to train various models to look for issues. Already one algorithm has been found to be effective in accurately identifying atrial fibrillation (AFib) at an early stage. Using a similar approach to the clinical trial in pancreatic cancer, the team discovered that AFib could be detected more than six months before it becomes clinically important.

“The reason that’s impactful is that once atrial fibrillation starts, clots can form in the heart, and those clots can travel to the brain and cause a stroke,” Dr. Callstrom says. “So, if you can stop that or prevent it from happening, you avoid a debilitating outcome for a patient and get them on medication early.”

Another model can diagnose patients with low ejection fraction, a form of heart failure, before symptoms are present, allowing doctors to intervene before the issue becomes critical.

“That model runs on every Mayo patient who has an EKG now,” Dr. Callstrom says. “Our cardiovascular medicine team ran a clinical trial in our health system with 20,000 patients to find out that this did have an impact on patient outcomes. We were able to measure it, and it picked up many patients with unsuspected heart failure or AFib. It was pretty amazing.”

EXPANDING THE FOUNDATION

Jim Rogers, who also serves as the senior administrator for the Generative AI Program, emphasizes that Mayo Clinic’s AI approaches align with the organization’s Bold. Forward. strategy to enhance internal care delivery while pursuing broader healthcare transformation.

The work is purposefully iterative. While each project is initially focused on a specific application or disease, Mayo’s established structure allows new learnings to be expanded to other areas by encompassing disciplines like genomics, pathology, imaging, text analysis, voice recognition and more.

The goal? Practical integration of all these elements to benefit physicians’ abilities to solve the needs of patients.

“We’re learning from every activity and with each step forward,” Jim says. “We’re not doing this out of mere curiosity — we want practical impact as quickly as possible. When a patient walks into one of our rooms, they expect us to have all the information needed to effectively treat them.”

CONNECTED CLINICIANS

AI’s impact isn’t just limited to disease identification and treatment. It’s helping physicians connect on a deeper level with patients too.

Mayo Clinic is using AI-powered ambient listening technology to transform patient encounters. Instead of clinicians typing notes during conversations — which can detract from personal interaction — the AI system captures and summarizes the discussion automatically. Then, the clinician can rapidly review and approve the notes, ensuring accuracy in the patient’s record.

We’re not doing this out of mere curiosity — we want practical impact as quickly as possible.

— JIM ROGERS, CEO, MAYO CLINIC DIGITAL PATHOLOGY

Dr. Callstrom says this innovation eliminates a difficult choice many physicians face: either document during the visit or spend extra time recording notes later in the day, hours after the appointment. With ambient AI handling documentation in the background, providers can focus entirely on patient interaction, ultimately bringing more humanity into healthcare.

A PROMISE-FILLED FUTURE

Even with all the advances, it’s what’s on the horizon that excites Dr. Callstrom the most.

Mayo Clinic is leveraging AI to analyze complex data in unprecedented ways — from genomics and digital pathology to cellular-level imaging. It’s all part of the organization’s mission in this new era to ensure the needs of the patient come first.

“Our aspirations for AI are to profoundly impact patient outcomes,” Dr. Callstrom says. “One of the things we always talk about is trying to identify disease at a state where we can intervene early. Previously, it’s been hypothetical — ‘If we had the right data, we could do this.’ It turns out with AI we can.”

The post Seeing the Unseen appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

It wasn’t the needle itself that brought Erika joy, but where the injection was occurring. Erika received treatment in 2024 in her Jacksonville, Florida, home as part of Mayo Clinic’s Cancer Care Beyond Walls program. Launched in April 2023, the program offers patients in the Jacksonville area access to care in their homes instead of the chemotherapy unit at Mayo Clinic in Florida.

“Most people would think a long injection isn’t very fun, but before, my treatment was taking a full day when you added in driving and everything else,” Erika says. “Now it’s five minutes. When it’s over, everything gets cleaned up and my nurse leaves. It’s wonderful.”

Families with Cancer Care Beyond Walls no longer must surrender entire days to in-person chemotherapy. Instead, treatment becomes integrated into their daily lives.

Erika was one of 55 Florida patients who had received infusions in their home through March 2025, a number that has continued to grow.

“Bringing cancer care straight to the patient’s home is a big step toward helping make cancer care more accessible,” says Morgan Posze, R.N., a nurse with the program. “It’s empowering for the patients and the families to not have to go through the stress that comes with having to change your whole life to be able to come to the clinic.”

Cancer frequently functions like a chronic condition, explains Roxana Dronca, M.D., who heads the program. When patients are in chemotherapy, there are regular hospital visits — and with those visits, lots of waiting. Studies have shown that after receiving a cancer diagnosis, patients can spend up to 15 hours a week traveling to receive treatment and sitting in waiting rooms.

“This program was born from Mayo Clinic’s primary value — the needs of the patient come first,” Dr. Dronca says. “It was hard to meet all our patients’ needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially patients with cancer. Mayo Clinic made care more accessible and flexible during the pandemic, but after the pandemic the needs of patients with cancer were still there.”

Erika Manternach (in black) and Kim Pineda are just two of the patients who are participating in the Cancer Care Beyond Walls program.

FREEDOM TO LIVE MORE NORMALLY

Kim Pineda has been a regular at Mayo Clinic in Florida since being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016.

She’s endured radiation, as well as challenging courses of chemotherapy — “the kind where I thought I might die, and not from the cancer.”

She went to a supportive stage for nearly a year. Then her cancer returned — this time it was in lymph nodes all along the left side of her body. That required another surgery, and from that point forward, since 2018, she’s been going to Mayo Clinic in Florida for treatment every three weeks.

That’s thousands of hours spent driving, walking from a parking spot through the clinic, and sitting and waiting. For Kim and her husband, Charlie, chemotherapy sessions kept them away for long stretches from the diner they own.

“The biggest challenge with cancer is time,” Kim says. “When you’re getting treated, your meds don’t get ordered until you’re sitting in the chair. For an hour-and-a-half infusion, you’re looking at four hours in the clinic. Even for a five-minute shot, the quickest I was ever in and out was 45 minutes.”

In 2024, in the middle of another long treatment day, Kim asked if there was any way to speed things up.

Her doctor told her there was something she might consider: Cancer Care Beyond Walls. Kim was an ideal candidate because she wasn’t experiencing any issues with her chemotherapy.

The care she received in her Jacksonville home was the same as in the clinic but took up a fraction of the time. Getting chemotherapy and working at the diner became a lot easier.

“I absolutely love it,” Kim says. “I have my little space in the closet where I store all my stuff. That’s my doctor’s office. I pull it out for them in the morning before they come.”

In addition to providing chemotherapy, Cancer Care Beyond Walls has integrated clinical trials for some patients, including Erika.

Erika had previously experienced a bad reaction to immunotherapy. Her Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center care team switched her to subcutaneous injections, rather than in a vein, believing the longer absorption period would be easier on her system.

Cancer Care Beyond Walls patients have access to Mayo Clinic care at all times.

This provided an avenue for me to take less time off work and spend more time with my family and doing the things I enjoy.

— ERIKA MANTERNACH

For example, when patients wake up in the middle of the night with a fever — which for those with cancer is a potential crisis that requires a trip to the hospital — a provider is only a push of a button away.

That button is on a tablet that Mayo Clinic provides to every Cancer Care Beyond Walls patient. When the button is pushed, a nurse in the Mayo Clinic in Florida control room appears on screen.

“We’ve worked so hard on this program’s safety and quality standards so that when we were ready to deliver it to our patients, it was a Mayo Clinic level of care,” Dr. Dronca says. “I believe that’s why our patients reacted positively to us, because they did not feel like it’s care that is detached from Mayo Clinic’s standard of excellence.”

Open image in lightbox

Open image in lightbox

A MOTHER’S MISSION

The origins of the Cancer Care Beyond Walls began with a heartbreaking loss.

In 2020, Dr. Dronca’s 6-year-old daughter Maya was diagnosed with an inoperable and incurable brain tumor known as a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). DIPGs are an extremely rare and aggressive form of brain cancer that primarily affects children and carries a median survival time of nine months.

Maya bravely fought her cancer for 14 months. She passed away in 2021.

“It was so difficult to put her in the car and transport her when she was so sick,” Dr. Dronca recalled. “The drive was a ton more painful than any drug. For any procedure that she went to, I would have given anything to have the flexibility and the availability of those services in my home.”

After losing her daughter, Dr. Dronca was overwhelmed with grief. She wasn’t sure she could return to her roles as the chair of the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the site director of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida. She feared she would see the face of the daughter she lost in every patient.

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She ultimately came back, possessing the compassion of someone who fully understood the pain families go through while fighting cancer. Treating patients with cancer was, and remains, Dr. Dronca’s life mission.

Dr. Dronca resolved that patients should be able to receive convenient, safe care in their homes whenever possible, sparing them the painful drives her family endured when Maya was sick.

“If I had access to the medications to give Maya and the labs to check her health status, I would have done this for her in my home,” Dr. Dronca says. “I kept thinking about it. If I wanted it, wouldn’t other people want it? Other mothers and caregivers and patients must feel like me.”

Jeremy Jones, M.D., is a consultant in the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the medical director of Cancer Care Beyond Walls for Mayo Clinic Platform. He has been involved with the program from the beginning. He says that it didn’t take long to appreciate just how big a difference receiving chemotherapy at home made for patients.

“I knew we were on to something when my first patient was finishing up their six months in the program,” Dr. Jones says. “When I said, ‘OK, we’re going to come back to the clinic now,’ they were like, ‘Absolutely not!’ It’s the first time I’ve ever had a patient express enthusiasm for continuing their current chemo regimen — because it was in their home.”

START TO FINISH: CHEMOTHERAPY AT HOME

Erika works as a quality assurance analyst for a trucking logistics company from her home. The Cancer Care Beyond Walls program afforded her a level of flexibility that was impossible to have with traditional care in the clinic. “The infusions are the same at home and in the clinic, but the buildup to actually receiving the treatment takes a long time,” Erika says. “They’re doing your blood work, waiting for the results of your blood work, meeting with the oncologist to clear you. “Then they place the order for the meds. Then you wait for the meds. Then they come in and they prep you.” Now, a typical treatment day for Erika might look like this:

DAY 1

8:30 a.m.

A Cancer Care Beyond Walls nurse calls to discuss how Erika is feeling. This usually lasts just a few minutes.

9:00 a.m.

A visiting nurse comes to Erika’s house to draw blood and measure vitals. This usually lasts about 30 minutes.

12:45 p.m.

In a video call with her Cancer Care Beyond Walls oncology team, they go over the results of her blood work and get the go-ahead for treatment. This usually lasts a few minutes.

DAY 2

9:30 a.m.

The refrigerated chemotherapy medications are delivered to her house by a courier.

10:00 a.m.

The visiting nurse arrives. While the medications are unpacked so they rise to room temperature, the nurse and Erika videoconference with the Cancer Care Beyond Walls team.

10:30 a.m.

Erika receives her treatment. Afterward, there is a second videoconference with the Cancer Care Beyond Walls team. Following that, the nurse cleans up and leaves. The courier returns to the house to remove all medical-related waste.

THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS

When Dr. Jones learned of Dr. Dronca’s vision for Cancer Care Beyond Walls, he says he shared her excitement for the idea. He also knew that it would not be easy to build.

“There were a lot of sleepless nights as we were developing Cancer Care Beyond Walls,” Dr. Jones says. “Tons of work went into what we have now — months of planning and thinking about every potential outcome, every potential event that could happen so that we could plan for it.”

Designing and running such an ambitious program required partnerships across the enterprise. None was more important than Mayo Clinic Platform.

“The partnership of Platform really accelerated our efforts,” Dr. Dronca says. “To set up a program like this, between us talking about it and doing the proof of concept was a few months. If you look at how healthcare moves anywhere, it would have taken two or three years to set up. But we had Platform’s support, their innovative thinking and their speed.”

To help bring the ideas to life, Platform needed a cancer care clinical operations expert. They found it in Rosanna Fahy.

At that time, Rosanna was with Memorial Sloan Kettering, where over the course of 31 years she had played a leading role in building and expanding their brick-and-mortar cancer care facilities.

For Rosanna, the opportunity to build the digital side of Cancer Care Beyond Walls — and to work with Platform leaders like John Halamka, M.D., M.S., Dwight and Dian Diercks President of Mayo Clinic Platform, and Maneesh Goyal, Platform chief operating officer — was as daunting as it was exciting. After a thorough interview process, she was offered the position of Platform’s associate vice president for Cancer Care Beyond Walls.

“Cancer is a complex disease,” Rosanna says. “For patients who are in the chemotherapy unit today, it probably takes seven or eight people in different roles who each have to do their piece in a connected way so that patients get safe, high-quality, dependable treatment.

“Now we do it so often that it looks pretty easy. But when you’re sitting in the chemotherapy chair, you’re not realizing how many things had to happen before that moment.”

Some of the key pieces were already available, Rosanna says. Mayo Clinic’s efforts to provide more remote care during the COVID-19 pandemic and the infrastructure of Advanced Care at Home were both valuable.

Since 2020, Advanced Care at Home has provided acute-level, inpatient-quality care to patients whose conditions included infections, congestive heart failure, bone marrow transplants, kidney transplants and other postsurgical needs.

Cancer Care Beyond Walls uses the same tablets and collection of technologies as Advanced Care at Home, making it possible to connect patients to a 24/7 command center.

During business hours on weekdays, when a Cancer Care Beyond Walls patient wants to speak with someone, they can push a button on their tablet and be connected to one of Mayo Clinic’s three dedicated Cancer Care Beyond Walls nurses.

On weekends, patients are connected with an Advanced Care at Home nurse. An oncology provider is on call at all times.

“My interactions with the patients are always either going to be video calls or phone calls,” says Morgan Posze, a nurse in the program. “It’s my job to create a space where the patient feels comfortable sharing their concerns and asking questions.

“I try to focus on listening to not only their medical needs but also their emotional experiences. We’re here to address anything and everything that they need.”

In addition to the foundation provided by Advanced Care at Home, Morgan represents an example of another key resource Cancer Care Beyond Walls already had in place: an exceptional clinical care staff that was committed to better meeting patients’ needs. Morgan, who had been with Mayo Clinic for almost a decade, jumped at the chance to be a part of Cancer Care Beyond Walls.

Her role is to be patients’ central point of contact with Mayo Clinic. Nurses connect patients with their entire care team, working closely with providers and schedulers to help coordinate everything from appointments to tests to medications — making sure everything lines up for each patient and their specific needs.

“The command center has a lot of the equipment that we need to make this virtual care possible,” Morgan says. “It’s really nice for us because the whole Cancer Care Beyond Walls team sits together, so it’s easy to collaborate to come up with plans and make changes. We all sit in one group where we can work together to make sure the patient is getting the best care.”

Open image in lightbox

Open image in lightbox

CREATING MORE POSSIBILITIES

In 2024, Cancer Care Beyond Walls’ impact was also felt by those Florida patients who needed to come into the Cancer Center for care.

“We are able to reach more patients because we can treat patients at phases of lower acuity in their home,” Dr. Dronca says. “This allows us to see the patients with complex conditions in the chemotherapy unit and the hospital when we need to see them.”

As Cancer Care Beyond Walls grows, one of the many beneficiaries will be patients who live in remote and underserved communities — an important step toward addressing health disparities. Benefactor support is accelerating the program’s growth by enhancing digital tools, developing community partnerships, and recruiting patient navigators and clinical staff to expand the program.

“Mayo Clinic has invested in building a digital product that would enable Cancer Care Beyond Walls’ care delivery model to be expanded, not only at Mayo Clinic but also to our Mayo Clinic Care Network partners,” Rosanna says. “Platform is building digital solutions that help our own practice, and we could ultimately take these same solutions and make them commercially available.”

Mayo Clinic is working to make at-home cancer care widely available. These efforts received a significant boost in 2024 with a generous philanthropic commitment from Stephen M. and Barbara J. Slaggie. In addition to other locations, the Slaggies are helping expand Cancer Care Beyond Walls to Mayo Clinic partners.

“We were excited when we learned about Mayo Clinic’s vision for making world-class cancer care available in more patients’ homes,” says Stephen Slaggie, who is a cancer survivor himself. “Not having to regularly upend your life every time you receive treatment makes it less overwhelming when you are facing cancer.”

‘THE PERFECT FIT’

For Erika Manternach, 2024 was also the year that Mayo Clinic doctors discovered she had a lymph node that was almost entirely encased with metastatic melanoma. She had initially been diagnosed with cancer in 2021 but had been put on a surveillance program of PET scans, MRIs and skin checks because the cancer seemed stable.

Tons of work went into what we have now — months of planning and thinking about every potential outcome, every potential event that could happen so that we could plan for it.

— JEREMY JONES, M.D.

After Erika underwent lymphadenectomy surgery to remove several cancer-containing lymph nodes and others at high risk, she was recommended to participate in Cancer Care Beyond Walls. Erika’s first two chemotherapy sessions were at Mayo Clinic in Florida before she began the first of 12 at-home sessions, per the structure of the program. To reduce the risk of infusion reactions in the home, all patients must have at least two cycles in the clinic prior to switching to at-home care.

“I can’t speak highly enough about this program,” Erika says. “This provided an avenue for me to take less time off work and spend more time with my family and doing the things I enjoy. It was the perfect fit.”

The post Healing at Home appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Born and raised in Portugal, Dr. Walther-Antonio studied biology at a local university, Universidade de Aveiro. As part of the curriculum, she was required to complete one year of research outside of the institution. Dr. Walther-Antonio applied for and was accepted to the NASA Astrobiology Institute for a research internship.

“It was something I always wanted to do: look for aliens,” says Dr. Walther-Antonio, sharing that her passion to explore the universe stemmed from her upbringing.  

“My dad raised me to be an independent thinker, so he never answered any of my questions as a child. He would always tell me, ‘I can’t give you the answer, but I can help you find it.’ When I was in middle school, I asked if there was life beyond our planet, and he said that no one knew the answer. I was stunned. It seemed like the most important question, so I started trying to learn everything I could about it.”

Dr. Walther-Antonio carried this passion for learning about extraterrestrial life throughout her education, from her NASA internship to her M.S. in microbiology at Indiana University to her Ph.D. in environmental sciences at Washington State University.

A Surprising Connection

During her Ph.D. training, Dr. Walther-Antonio analyzed microbialites ─ microbial structures that can be several feet high and are found at the bottom of certain freshwater lakes. As she researched the pathways of these structures, she noticed an unexpected connection.

“I saw that there were a lot of pathways of communication between these types of cells. When I began researching what kinds of pathways these were, I started hitting a lot of cancer literature,” Dr. Walther-Antonio explains. “This was very surprising, but then I thought, ‘Well, if we have microbes in our body, it could impact treatment because they utilize these same pathways.’”

The timing was fortuitous. Mayo Clinic had recently created a Microbiome Program within the Center for Individualized Medicine. The Microbiome Program studies how the naturally occurring microbial populations in each person’s body help maintain health and how disrupting these microbes can lead to health problems. Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., the current president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, was leading the effort at the time as the Carlson and Nelson Endowed Executive Director for the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine.

“There are very few people who cross the astrobiology and medical fields, so it’s a really interesting place to be,” says Dr. Walther-Antonio, who joined the Microbiome Program as a research fellow in 2012. “Now I’m looking for aliens, or microbes, in the human body. And sure enough, we have them. They’re very different than what we might find on other planets, but nevertheless they are there, and they have an impact on our health.”

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Making a Difference Worldwide

Dr. Walther-Antonio’s current research focuses on the role of the microbiome in cancer and reproductive health, particularly endometrial and ovarian cancers. World Cancer Research Fund International ranks endometrial and ovarian cancers among the top 10 most prevalent cancers in women worldwide, yet there are still no standard screenings for early detection.

Dr. Walther-Antonio and her team are on a mission to change that. By exploring the microbiome, they have uncovered specific microbial signatures that are linked to endometrial and ovarian cancers. They are using these findings to develop an innovative at-home swab test for women to help with early detection, which is critical to improving survival outcomes.

Now I’m looking for aliens, or microbes, in the human body. And sure enough, we have them. They’re very different than what we might find on other planets, but nevertheless they are there, and they have an impact on our health.

— Marina Walther-Antonio, Ph.D.

Affordable, easy-to-use home tests will be helpful for all women, and particularly for at-risk populations. Thanks to generous benefactor funding, Dr. Walther-Antonio and her team are developing a low-cost human papillomavirus (HPV) test. Testing for and treating HPV can reduce the risk of cervical cancer. The goal is to make tests easily accessible for women in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where cervical cancer rates are extremely high.

In New Zealand, Dr. Walther-Antonio’s team is collaborating with the Waitematā District Health Board officials to help the Pacific Islander and Māori populations, who have some of the highest incidences of endometrial cancer globally. In the U.S., Dr. Walther-Antonio is working to overcome health disparities with a long-term initiative designed to engage Black women, a population that experiences higher mortality and morbidity rates from endometrial cancer despite a similar incidence rate.

“The ideas we have and the technology we develop are so new that it’s not always well understood by traditional funding mechanisms,” she says. “The reason I’m here is because of benefactor generosity. They are the ones who allow us to dream big and transform medicine.”

Mentoring Agents of Change

As Dr. Walther-Antonio makes significant strides in women’s health worldwide, she says she also feels great satisfaction in her role as director of the Leadership in Ph.D. Program, associate director of the Clinical and Translational Ph.D. Program, and associate dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

“Mentoring Ph.D. students is the most rewarding part of my job,” she says. “I have come to realize that I can’t fix everything for everyone right now, but I can make it a little better. I can give the next generation the tools and skills they need and the knowledge that they are agents of change.”

She encourages her mentees to spend time in the operating room or walking the halls where patients are, so they never lose sight of their purpose.

“It’s really important to see the people you’re impacting on a daily basis,” she says. “It helps keep you motivated and reminds you that there are real lives on the other end that are dependent on our efforts. That’s what keeps me going.”

A Successful Orbit

It’s been 20 years since Dr. Walther-Antonio first arrived in the United States to search for aliens. After years of education and research, she has successfully infused her passion for astrobiology with medicine, leading teams that have discovered breakthroughs benefiting women’s health worldwide.

“It turns out that life detection missions in astrobiology are not that different from pathogen detection in humans,” she says.

And that childhood fascination with life beyond our planet has led her down a unique and unexpected path of improving the lives of people right here on earth.

“In research there are things that don’t always work,” she says. “But you’re not going to make any splash if you don’t try.”

The post Extraterrestrial Quest Sends Researcher Down Unexpected Path appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

It’s a vision that is close to the couple’s heart, as both have witnessed friends and family pass away from the disease.

“I’ve seen the time, the energy and the emotions that the entire family goes through watching their loved one undergo cancer treatment for months or even years,” says Becky, whose father passed away from melanoma when she was 13 years old. “If we catch the cancer earlier when the treatment isn’t so challenging, it would be life-changing for so many families.”

To help fuel this critical work, Bahman and Becky established the Hoveida Family Foundation Cancer Discovery and Interception Fund through a generous gift from the Hoveida Family Foundation. Becky and Bahman are recognized as Philanthropic Partners.

The fund is helping accelerate Mayo Clinic’s bold vision to revolutionize cancer care. Researchers are using innovative, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled science to detect cancer earlier, intercept and reverse cancer growth, and intervene before cancer progresses to more advanced disease.

The concept of using AI to find solutions to challenges is a process that Bahman understands well. An engineer and businessman, he co-founded a software company, Open Systems International, in Minnesota in 1992. As the company grew, Bahman and Becky never wavered from their commitment to environmental stewardship, ethical sourcing and treating their employees like members of their own family. After selling the company in 2020, the couple formed their family foundation so that they could “keep doing good.”

The Hoveida Family Foundation is focused on the pursuit of science to help humanity and the environment. This includes critical medical research, and Bahman says that Mayo Clinic was at the top of their list. Bahman, who was born in Iran, recalls hearing of the medical organization as a child.

“I knew that the royal family was seen at Mayo Clinic and that it was the great center of medical care in the world, but I didn’t really know much else at the time,” Bahman says.

That all changed in 1999, when Bahman’s father was diagnosed with colon cancer and selected Mayo Clinic for his care.

“The care he got was excellent,” says Bahman. “I was very impressed with the systems in place, and that’s when I realized what a high-quality institution Mayo Clinic was. Healthcare is moving to a high-tech, data-driven industry, and Mayo is pioneering this work.”

Both Bahman and Becky are patients in the Mayo Clinic Executive Health Program, trusting Mayo Clinic with their personal care as they stay connected with the promising research efforts that they’ve helped make possible — including AI-powered breast cancer detection and early pancreatic cancer detection.

Within breast cancer research, a Mayo Clinic researcher and a researcher from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have used funds to develop and test a model that better identifies women who are at high risk and would benefit from preventive measures like lifestyle changes and risk-reducing medications. Next steps will be to validate the model. 

In pancreatic cancer research, a physician researcher and his team have designed an AI Pancreas Cancer Early Detection trial, which is expected to launch later this year. The trial will leverage an AI language model to screen 10,000 patients, identifying those at elevated risk for pancreatic cancer.

“The work in pancreatic and breast cancer is so meaningful to us,” explains Becky. “Just before we gave our gift, we had lost a valued employee and friend to pancreatic cancer. The time from diagnosis to death was so short. I had also recently lost a family member to breast cancer. The idea of using science to diagnose these cancers at an earlier stage is incredibly important.”

The Hoveida Family Foundation Cancer Discovery and Interception Fund is also supporting AI-Powered Science and Discovery Awards in Cancer. This program finds and funds the most innovative concepts and proposals from individuals and teams across Mayo Clinic.

“Mayo Clinic has created a great team of researchers, data scientists and AI experts,” says Bahman. “They have a level of passion that I have not seen anywhere else. If a practical solution comes out of this research to detect cancer even six months ahead of when cancer symptoms manifest, that’s a huge advancement in saving thousands of lives. I have great hopes that Mayo Clinic will be successful.”

Becky agrees, adding that she feels pride in being part of Mayo Clinic’s mission to help people everywhere.

“When Mayo Clinic finds solutions, their goal is to disseminate information across the medical field worldwide and make it available to everyone,” says Becky. “They are helping more than their own patients — they are helping the world."

The post Engineering Earlier Cancer Detection Through AI appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Making Cancer Care at Home More Available

Cancer Care Beyond Walls has made life a lot easier for patients with cancer and their families.

However, insurance companies do not typically reimburse for at-home chemotherapy infusion, which means that Mayo Clinic is currently underwriting Cancer Care Beyond Walls’ costs.

Mayo Clinic actively engages in federal advocacy work and payer discussions, explains Rosanna Fahy, Platform’s associate vice president for Cancer Care Beyond Walls.

“Sending a nurse to individual patients’ homes is more expensive than having a nurse in a chemo unit who could treat three or four patients at a time,” Fahy says. “I’m grateful for the institutional funding that has supported the program while the data is gathered to meet the reimbursement challenges.”

Rosanna says it’s not surprising that chemotherapy at patients’ homes, when viewed in isolation, is less cost-efficient than at a single clinical location. It simply costs more to have so many moving pieces — nurses, cars, couriers, chemotherapy solutions — than it is to centralize all operations in a single chemo unit.

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But Mayo Clinic is gathering the data to show a fuller financial picture, which may influence future insurance decisions for at-home chemotherapy. Rosanna says that reimbursement models are not just about the cost of care today — they’re about the cost of each patient’s care over the course of their cancer journey, and how the nature of that care influences outcomes.

“We can predict how many times a patient with cancer is likely to have an emergency department visit for some kind of acute care need,” Rosanna explains. “That's knowable and predictable.

“So, if we can intervene early by managing your care at home and avoid that ED visit, that's where the savings start to come — acute care and emergency episodes are higher cost. Savings are not only about direct costs; they’re also in patients’ time and their comfort at home.” 

Collecting data to demonstrate the economic benefits of at-home chemotherapy is just one way Mayo Clinic is working to grow the concept. Other efforts are making a more immediate impact on patients with cancer during their treatment journey.

In 2025, Cancer Care Beyond Walls began in North Dakota, when Altru Health System became the first partner in the Mayo Clinic Care Network to launch the program. Rosanna worked in 2024 to make this expansion possible, alongside Jeremy Jones, M.D., a consultant in the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the medical director of Cancer Care Beyond Walls for Mayo Clinic Platform. Rosanna and Dr. Jones worked closely with Altru, using Platform resources to develop a pragmatic clinical trial.

They both note that there’s a certain symmetry to this. Altru was the first partner to ever join the Mayo Clinic Care Network, Mayo’s community-based rural healthcare delivery system, and now it’s the first organization in the Care Network to join Mayo Clinic in transforming how cancer care is delivered to patients.

“The Platform model is really an enablement model,” Dr. Jones says. “It's less about, ‘Mayo Clinic has to own every single step of the way,’ and more of, ‘Let's show the world how to do things the Mayo Clinic way.’ The beautiful thing about Platform is that we can reach so many more people.”

The post Making Cancer Care at Home More Available 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.