Strategic Lab Collaborations help Mayo Clinic Laboratories accelerate innovation and expand access to advanced diagnostics.
Innovation in laboratory medicine has never moved faster. New diagnostic technologies are emerging across disease areas, from neurodegenerative disorders and infectious diseases to precision oncology and autoimmune conditions. Yet even the most advanced laboratory organizations must make choices about where to focus their internal development efforts.
For Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Strategic Lab Collaborations provide a framework for identifying, evaluating, and scaling promising diagnostic innovations, helping bring new technologies to physicians and patients more quickly. By combining Mayo Clinic Laboratories' clinical expertise, quality standards, and laboratory infrastructure with the specialized capabilities of diagnostic innovators, these collaborations expand access to important testing while maintaining a focus on accuracy, clinical utility, and patient care.
"The pace of innovation is so fast that there are groups outside the walls of Mayo Clinic Laboratories that are bringing up approaches that are having a tremendous impact on patients," says Matthew Binnicker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at Mayo Clinic Laboratories. "By working with them through our strategic collaboration model, we're able to broaden our test menu and offer physicians and patients tools and diagnostics that they need."
Accelerating innovation through collaboration
For decades, Mayo Clinic Laboratories and Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology have partnered to transform scientific discoveries into diagnostic solutions. That strong relationship continues to be a cornerstone of innovation, while rapid advancements in the broader diagnostics landscape are creating new pathways to complement and enhance traditional test development efforts.
Strategic Lab Collaborations are designed to engage organizations with technologies or capabilities that complement Mayo Clinic Laboratories' existing strengths. These relationships go beyond adding another test to a catalog. They bring together expertise from both organizations to evaluate new technologies, optimize implementation, and expand access to diagnostics that may otherwise take longer to reach patients.
According to Clark Robinson, senior director of Strategic Lab Collaborations and Mayo Clinic Cardiac Monitoring, the goal is simple.
"It's really about expanding access to testing that will improve outcomes," he says. "We want to do what's best for the patient."
These collaborations also bring together experts across clinical practice, laboratory operations, quality, regulatory affairs, information technology, finance, marketing, and implementation. The result is a rigorous evaluation process that helps ensure new innovations meet Mayo Clinic Laboratories’ standards before they are introduced to physicians and patients.
"Regardless of who we work with, we apply the same quality standards and benchmarks of excellence," says Dr. Binnicker. "We can't make sacrifices in quality and accuracy."
Today, Mayo Clinic Laboratories' Strategic Lab Collaborations span multiple specialties, bringing innovative diagnostic options to clinicians across a broad range of diseases.
"It's really about expanding access to testing that will improve outcomes. We want to do what's best for the patient."
Clark Robinson
Advancing neurodegenerative disease diagnostics
Several collaborations focus on improving the diagnosis and management of neurodegenerative disorders.
Mayo Clinic Laboratories' collaboration with C2N Diagnostics expands access to blood-based biomarker testing, including assays designed to support the evaluation of Alzheimer's disease in symptomatic patients. These tools help clinicians gather additional information earlier in the diagnostic journey while complementing existing neurologic testing strategies.
Similarly, the collaboration with Amprion provides access to testing designed to aid in the diagnosis of synucleinopathies, including Parkinson's disease, Lewy body dementia, and related disorders. By adding specialized capabilities that were not previously available within Mayo Clinic Laboratories' portfolio, the collaboration helps address an important need in neurodegenerative disease evaluation. The collaboration also expands access to novel approaches for detecting disease-associated protein misfolding, helping clinicians evaluate patients with suspected synucleinopathies using advanced diagnostic tools that are not widely available.
Dr. Binnicker notes that collaborations like these exemplify the purpose of the Strategic Lab Collaborations program: identifying valuable technologies already demonstrating clinical impact and making them available to more physicians and patients.
Transforming infectious diseases testing
In infectious diseases diagnostics, Mayo Clinic Laboratories has collaborated with Karius to provide access to metagenomic sequencing capabilities that help identify difficult-to-diagnose infections from plasma and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid specimens.
Robinson sees the collaboration as an example of how Strategic Lab Collaborations can help expand access to innovative diagnostics while combining expertise from both organizations. “One of the things I think is particularly important is the knowledge sharing that happens through these relationships,” he says. “That allows us to evaluate new technologies rigorously while also learning from the companies we work with and finding the best way to translate promising innovation into a reliable, scalable laboratory service.”
Expanding precision oncology capabilities
Precision oncology continues to evolve rapidly, creating a growing need for specialized testing that can identify clinically relevant biomarkers and support personalized treatment decisions.
Through its collaboration with Lucence, Mayo Clinic Laboratories provides access to liquid biopsy testing that analyzes circulating tumor DNA and RNA to uncover important molecular insights. By analyzing tumor-derived genetic material found in blood samples, liquid biopsy testing can provide clinically relevant molecular insights without requiring additional tissue collection in certain situations. The collaboration expands access to advanced oncology testing capabilities while complementing Mayo Clinic Laboratories' broader oncology portfolio.
Dr. Binnicker sees Lucence as a strong example of how Strategic Lab Collaborations can accelerate access to emerging technologies. “We see something exciting happening in the market through companies, and we ask whether there's a current gap in our test menu and whether there is a strong need among patients and physicians,” he says. “If we answer those questions yes, then we can pursue these collaboration models to bring those diagnostics to patients in a timely manner.”
Supporting autoimmune disease management
Strategic Lab Collaborations are also helping expand capabilities in autoimmune disease testing.
The collaboration with Progentec introduces biomarker testing designed to assess lupus disease activity and evaluate flare risk. For patients living with lupus, disease activity can fluctuate significantly over time, making proactive monitoring an important part of long-term management. These tools provide clinicians with additional information that may help guide disease monitoring and support proactive patient management.
While distinct from the neurological, infectious disease, and oncology collaborations in the portfolio, Progentec reflects the same underlying goal: identifying innovative diagnostic approaches and making them more accessible to healthcare providers and patients.
Delivering answers to more patients
One of the defining features of Strategic Lab Collaborations is that they are designed as ongoing strategic relationships rather than transactional arrangements.
For Mayo Clinic Laboratories, success is not measured solely by introducing a new test. Instead, collaborations are continually evaluated to assess clinical impact, operational performance, and opportunities for improvement and future growth.
"The Strategic Lab Collaborations model is intended to give Mayo Clinic Laboratories clients access to testing and innovation faster than we would have had we relied on more traditional methods of bringing tests in-house," says Dr. Binnicker. "The goal behind all of that is to get answers to patients that they need."
That focus on access, quality, and shared expertise remains central to every collaboration.
INNOVATION THROUGH COLLABORATION
Mayo Clinic Laboratories’ Strategic Lab Collaborations bring innovative diagnostic technologies to physicians and patients more quickly. By combining Mayo Clinic expertise, rigorous quality standards, and laboratory infrastructure with the specialized capabilities of diagnostic innovators, these relationships expand access to advanced testing across multiple disease areas. Explore Mayo Clinic Laboratories' current collaborations and learn how we're helping transform the future of diagnostic medicine, together.
Looking ahead
As innovation continues to accelerate, Mayo Clinic Laboratories leaders expect Strategic Lab Collaborations to play an increasingly important role in the future of laboratory medicine.
From precision diagnostics tailored to individual patients to more accessible testing models that reduce barriers to care, emerging technologies are reshaping how diagnostic information is generated, delivered, and used. Strategic Lab Collaborations provide a pathway to evaluate and adopt those innovations while maintaining Mayo Clinic's commitment to quality and clinical excellence.
"We can't accomplish everything on our own," says Dr. Binnicker. "It's going to make collaboration even more of a need in the future."
In that way, Strategic Lab Collaborations are helping Mayo Clinic Laboratories do what they were designed to do: connect promising innovations with the physicians and patients who need them most.
