Collaborations
During the Mayo Clinic Otolaryngology Medical Student Research Fellowship program, you will have access to a wide range of consultative resources and facilities:
3D Anatomic Modeling Lab
The Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery has partnered closely with the 3D Anatomic Modeling Lab at Mayo Clinic on academic and clinical projects. Radiologists are dedicated to placing care-changing 3D models into physicians' hands and have changed the global medical 3D printing and 3D visualization landscape.
Within the department, completion of a virtual surgical planning session with one of the 3D Anatomic Modeling Lab's biomechanical engineers and a radiologist is now the standard of care prior to any bony free flap reconstruction. The lab has studied the use of the patient-specific cutting guides and intraoperative models created in these planning sessions and has found patient outcomes to be superior.
Mayo Clinic surgical teams routinely work with the 3D Anatomic Modeling Lab to create models of complex relationships, such as pediatric vascular or tracheal anomalies, and skull base tumors adjacent to critical vasculature. In addition, the lab has partnered with Mayo surgeons to create interactive 3D models of head and neck anatomy, which have been used for educating fellows at national courses and teaching sinus anatomy to residents.
Biomedical and scientific visualization
Biomedical and scientific illustrators combine conceptual skills and medical knowledge to create original illustrations in black and white or color using conventional and electronic media. The Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery collaborates with professional medical artists to create visual representations of complex anatomic findings for both educational and research-related publications.
Center for Individualized Medicine
The Center for Individualized Medicine is at the foundation of Mayo Clinic's emergence as a global leader in a new era of health care that focuses on the genomic, molecular and cellular interactions at the very foundation of life and disease. Synthesizing a century of unrivaled clinical knowledge with the latest genomic sequencing and personalized medicine tools, the Center for Individualized Medicine discovers and applies new ways to predict, diagnose and treat disease.
Researchers in the Center for Individualized Medicine collaborate with physicians to identify specific clinical problems and then work backward to furnish health care providers with the tools to tailor treatments to each of their patients in ways never before possible.
In partnership with the Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery, the center has made strides in better understanding complex disease processes including trends in the management of intracranial meningiomas and racial differences in vestibular schwannomas.
Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics
Mayo Clinic's Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics is advancing patient care by bringing regenerative medicine therapies into the clinical practice now and in the future.
The center's approach is to discover, validate and deliver regenerative therapies, products and services as they become available. It prioritizes the discovery, translation and application of regenerative solutions to advance patient care and restore function, repair damaged tissue and organs, and assist in patients' recovery from illness or injury.
The Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery works with the Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics to investigate the potential clinical applications of adipose-derived stem cells, osteogenic scaffolds and exosome therapy.
Department of Quantitative Health Sciences
The Mayo Clinic Department of Quantitative Health Sciences provides expertise in epidemiology, biomedical statistics and informatics, health care policy and research, and digital health sciences. Biostatistics researchers have had a presence at Mayo Clinic for more than 100 years and currently provide expertise to more than 3000 ongoing projects, many of which are funded by the National Institutes of Health and other extramural research grants.
The Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery collaborates with the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences to create active, engaged and enduring relationships with master's-level and doctorate-level biostatisticians. With a shared goal of investing in a research team that includes the biostatistician, the two departments have developed an integrated process by which researchers can engage with biostatisticians throughout the entirety of their project timelines.
Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering
The Mayo Clinic Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering provides consultation, design and development services to Mayo Clinic staff members who need devices, systems or instruments that are not available commercially.
Several divisions within the Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery have active, ongoing research projects underway in collaboration with Mayo Clinic biomedical engineers, who bring engineering expertise to clinical and surgical problems. With access to a large machine shop, glassblowing shop, titanium printer, and expertise in 3D modeling and printing, the engineers engaged in projects with the department are critical collaborators in our group.
Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center
The Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center is designated by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center. This means the clinic's renowned physicians, researchers and scientists carry out team-based, patient-centered research to develop the latest technologies and treatments to address unmet patient needs. As a result, people who come to the clinic for cancer care have access to hundreds of clinical trials in all phases.
U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks Mayo Clinic among the top hospitals for cancer in the nation.
Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery
The Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery brings together unique capabilities by combining design methods, knowledge management, big data analysis, health care engineering principles and advanced simulations to solve challenges for patients, providers and the health care system at large. The center's goal is to translate discoveries into evidence-based, actionable treatments, processes and procedures.
Otolaryngology Research Laboratory
The Mayo Clinic Otolaryngology Research Laboratory has two primary goals. First, the lab aims to support the ongoing research in the otolaryngology department by providing expertise on the scope and application of laboratory-based approaches to investigate the underlying pathophysiology of otorhinolaryngologic diseases.
The lab's second goal is to better understand the role the immune system plays in otorhinolaryngologic diseases. In some cases, the connection with the immune system is readily apparent. For example, the lab is studying the mechanisms by which the immune system drives chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps. In other cases, the immune system's role is less apparent, such as the lab's research on immune cells in oropharyngeal carcinoma. In yet other cases, the immune system can cause side effects that cause disease treatments to fail.
In the future, the lab has plans to broaden the research arm of the Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery to include studies of the co-modulation that exists between immune cells and the nervous system, the impact of sex as a biological variable and the role of the microbiome in both mechanisms and treatments of disease.
Procedural and anatomical labs and services
Mayo Clinic's Procedural Skills Laboratory and Department of Anatomical Services offer invaluable expertise and access to anatomic specimens critical to the development of hypothesis and anatomically driven research.
Resources offered by Mayo's Anatomy Laboratory include access to cadaveric specimens, temporal bones and microvascular animal models. The lab offers access to unique fixation services, latex-injection techniques and the ability to image specimens prior to and during dissection. In addition, researchers have opportunities to partner with clinical anatomists to investigate unique anatomic relationships to solve clinical problems.