For more than 50 years, Mayo Clinic Laboratories has been providing meaningful results to individuals seeking genetic answers. Rare genetic disorders can be among the most difficult conditions to diagnose. To provide meaningful answers, our genetic testing is developed and supported by an integrated team of clinical, genetic, and laboratory experts and uses precision technologies to reveal variations related to diagnosis and treatment. Built around a tradition of placing patients’ needs first, our testing generates personalized insights to elevate understanding of a patient’s condition.
“We understand supplemental assays come with additional cost and effort, but our commitment to providing complete and accurate results for our patients motivates us to go beyond standard lab testing processes.”
Wei Shen, Ph.D., associate director of the Clinical Genome Sequencing Laboratory at Mayo Clinic.
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Justin Fugelsang and Zach Pedowitz have never met. Yet both young men were diagnosed with a rare form of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, called sorbitol dehydrogenase (SORD) deficiency, and both found clarity through Mayo Clinic Laboratories' innovative SORD testing. Their journeys inspire resilience, as Justin has channeled his emotions into guitar playing, and Zach has embraced educational leadership.
Cherisse Marcou, Ph.D., and Marissa Ellingson, M.S., CGC, discuss whole exome sequencing (WES) at Mayo Clinic Laboratories. The comprehensive evaluation uses next-generation sequencing to detect for single nucleotide variants, small insertions or deletions, and copy number variants on approximately 20,000 genes, enabling precision answers to accurately diagnose, manage, and treat patients with identified inherited illness.
Before testing at Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Barbara Domaille, Deborah Neville, Pamela Neville, and Rylie Ronnenberg thought there could be a genetic connection to the hip problems they shared. After the testing, they knew for sure.
This is a 6-part series describing the products and clinical tools of a laboratory quality improvement project called Region 4 Stork, or R4S.
With the rise of next generation sequencing (NGS) technology, multigene panel testing is expanding so rapidly that clinical practice is racing to keep pace. And questions within genetic tests have expanded along with it, making definitive answers more challenging to come by. Experts in the Genomics Laboratory in Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology work to explain this often misunderstood technology.
One of the biggest misunderstandings about genetic testing is a perception that once a variant is identified and analyzed thoroughly, using all the best tools available, it can be associated with a specific disease or condition. But many mutations are deemed “variants of unknown significance,” meaning there is no reported (or insufficient) evidence as to whether or not they cause disease.
In the last decade or so, genetic testing has evolved from single-gene Sanger based assays to much more complex next-generation sequencing (NGS) based assays. This incredible technology has facilitated the rapid and high-throughput evaluation of many genes (hundreds of thousands of DNA strands) all at once.
This week's featured chromosomal microarray test in focus is presented by William Sukov, M.D., a pathologist and cancer geneticist at Mayo Clinic. He discusses when this test should be used for patients with renal tumors.
Newborn screening panels that test for a variety of conditions are available in every state; however, test performance and response rate by each state are very different. Mayo Clinic's Biochemical Genetics Laboratory created the Collaborative Laboratory Integrated Reports tool to mitigate the national (and international) problem of false positives and to raise the bar on test performance.
Ann Moyer, M.D., Ph.D. gives an overview of this new test available through Mayo Clinic Laboratories. She discusses when this testing should be ordered, how this testing improves upon other testing approaches, and what clinical action can be taken due to the results of this testing.
Dietrich Matern, M.D., Ph.D., Division Chair of Laboratory Genetics in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology in Rochester, Minnesota, has been appointed as a new director on the board of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).
Pharmacogenomic testing is still limited, despite ample research, the existence of guidelines, and the emerging evidence it can help patients. Ann Moyer, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Director of the Personalized Genomics Laboratory at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, makes a case for pharmacogenomics.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have discovered a second-tier test for Pompe disease that has been shown to improve the specificity of newborn screening for the disorder, which would lower the rate of false-positive results.