Emerging Science

The Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine continues to lead the field in precision medicine research, including in new and developing areas such as exposomics.

Exposomics

Studying the exposome is one of the next frontiers of biomedical science and will significantly enhance the ability to individualize patient care. While medicine has greatly benefited from the explosion of genomic research in recent decades, genomics represents only a percentage of the factors that cause or contribute to disease.

The exposome — the measure of all the exposures a person has in their lifetime, including environment, diet and lifestyle — is a critical counterpart to the genome and also has significant impact on health and disease. Exposomics studies how those exposures relate to health and disease.

Understanding the exposome encompasses new high-throughput spectrometry methodologies that generate high-dimensional data. These data will inspire foundational advances in computational analytics, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, to identify biomarkers of disease processes and new targets for therapy.

Resources such as the individualized medicine blog and educational efforts such as the Individualizing Medicine Conference help build the health care workforce of the future by sharing Mayo Clinic expertise about novel concepts, emerging methodologies and new potential biomarkers in the era of exposome-enhanced individualized medicine.

Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory

The Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory is a visionary space designed to continue Mayo Clinic's long tradition of pioneering patient treatments and diagnostics. Its mission is to foster innovation — including grassroots innovation — across different specialties, through partnerships in-house as well as with external companies. Located on the third floor of One Discovery Square in a 9,600-square-foot space, the lab is an active strategic partnership between Mayo's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and the Center for Individualized Medicine.

The lab has room and resources for evaluating technology quickly, giving researchers early access to technology and the opportunity to test it, with the potential to influence the final product. These resources allow Mayo Clinic to strike more business agreements and co-development relationships, move quickly, and bring more capabilities to the collaboration.

Designed as a flexible space, the Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory moves beyond a traditional lab model. It can be quickly modified to meet each project's needs and features entire walls of whiteboard to help capture ideas and cultivate discussion. It represents Mayo Clinic's way of responding to disruptive technologies in a very nimble way to bring innovations back into systems that have been proved to deliver the best possible patient care.