Campus Connection

A collaborative research grant program with Mayo Clinic Health System enhances health innovation

Collaborative research projects between UWL and Mayo Clinic Health System are reshaping the landscape of healthcare in the Coulee Region and beyond. 

In 2019, UWL and Mayo announced a research collaboration agreement designed to improve the health and wellness of the Coulee Region through research supported by seed grants. The collaboration enables researchers at both institutions to work together to prepare the next generation of scientists, innovators and health care providers. 

“We can take a project from the point of students' brainstorming ideas all the way to clinical testing. That’s a cool and rare thing that we have here, and it’s one of the opportunities available that sets us apart,” says Patrick Grabowski, associate professor of health professions/physical therapy and recipient of a seed grant. “We couldn’t accomplish the clinical part, the most important part, without our partnerships. The local hospitals have been great supporters of our students and programs, and this Mayo Seed Grant Program is a prime example.” 

The current seed grant research projects advance research related to breast cancer, using artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine and reducing symptoms of peripheral arterial disease. These research projects include: 

• Are megakaryocytes and platelets harmful or helpful in breast cancer cell metastasis? 
  
  • The research team hopes to gain a better understanding of the connection between hard-to-treat breast cancer and cardiovascular changes. This research could potentially lead to better diagnostic tools and/or therapeutics. Research findings will provide valuable preliminary data for securing larger extramural funding. 
    
    
•  Pelvic floor muscle assessment with AI-assisted transabdominal ultrasound: 
  • Transabdominal ultrasound is already known to be a valid method for assessing pelvic floor muscle function, but it requires some cumbersome computer-based measurements. New software that uses artificial intelligence to identify and automatically measure structures within the pelvic region could be used to improve the clinical efficiency of the technique. This would open the door to widespread adoption of these methods in clinical practice, thereby enhancing the patient's experience. This technology could also have applications in telehealth. 
    

• Passive stretching improves functional walking capacity in patients with Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD): 
  • This proposal aims to study how stretching can help patients mitigate symptoms related to Peripheral Arterial Disease. Progress of the research will be tracked through several techniques, including muscle biopsies and blood tests. Since there are limited non-pharmacological options for PAD, this research project leads the first low-cost treatment plan to improve patient physiological function, slow functional decline, and understand how stretching can improve the cardiovascular health and well-being of PAD patients. 

Meet the UWL researchers

The research project: "Are megakaryocytes and platelets harmful or helpful in breast cancer cell metastasis?" by Sierra Colavito (UWL), Jaclyn Wisinski (UWL), Scott Okuno (Mayo). 

Summary:  

This research project aims to investigate the effects of metastatic breast cancer cells on the biological phenotype of platelets, including their proliferation, adhesion, and signaling, plus studying the reverse. Additionally, there’s a more clinical aim in which the team will collect blood samples from patients undergoing biopsies for suspicious mammograms. These samples come from patients in four main cohorts — those that have benign biopsies, those with early stages of disease, those with invasive breast cancer, and those with metastatic breast cancer. The research team will analyze the characteristics of platelets from patients in these different cohorts.

Who:  Sierra Colavito and Jaclyn Wisinski, UWL associate professors of biology 

 How will this project involve students? 

We have already supported several students, including two graduate students who received summer stipend support. We have included many other students in this research project that receive course credit for participating. 

When will the research get underway and conclude? 

We were awarded the grant in spring of 2023, and the grant period will end in April 2025. We anticipate continuing with this research and submitting larger extramural grants. 

The research project: Passive stretching improves functional walking capacity in patients with Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) by Jacob Caldwell (UWL), Salvador Jaime (UWL), Daniel Freidenreich (UWL), Sherwin Toribio (UWL), Mohammed Osman (Mayo), Andrew Jagim (Mayo). 

Summary: 

This project aims to provide a clinically relevant investigation on long- term passive calf stretching with and without exogenous nitrate supplementation in patients with peripheral arterial disease. This investigation will determine factors leading to our primary outcome of increased walking distance. As there are no optimal medical treatment strategies available for peripheral arterial disease, this study will provide timely information on a novel idea to improve walking distance.

Who: Jacob Caldwell, UWL assistant professor of exercise and sport science 

How will this project involve students? 

We will include undergraduates. Specifically, this project will allow undergraduate students to learn cutting-edge scientific techniques used to measure blood vessel function and muscle oxidative stress. This will strengthen their education by encouraging them to apply classroom concepts to an understudied clinical population. We also have a national institute of health R15 academic research enhancement award submitted and hope to get funded. This grant is directly focused on strengthening the research environment and allowing undergraduates to gain biomedical research experience. It also allows us to pay students for their work in the lab. 

When will the research get underway and conclude? 

The research is currently approved as a clinical trial and is recruiting patients. This study will take place for the next three years. 

How did you get connected with this research project? 

This project idea started with my post-doctoral mentor, Dr. Judy Muller-Delp. She was working on passive stretching in aged animals and patients with PAD. During my doctoral work, I used nitrate supplementation for projects in animals and postmenopausal women, so I combined these areas to create this novel project. 

The research project: “Pelvic floor muscle assessment with AI-assisted transabdominal ultrasound” by Patrick Grabowski (UWL), Denise Grabowski (Mayo), Angela Imhoff (Mayo).

Summary: 

Traditional assessment of muscle function is invasive and requires specialty training, but new methods for screening, including transabdominal ultrasound, may make management more accessible for patients. The pelvic floor muscles are important for many body functions. Some of these include breathing, physically supporting body organs, and maintaining continence of bowel and bladder. These muscles are prone to dysfunction for many reasons, and problems have a heavy impact on daily life.

Who: Patrick Grabowski, UWL associate professor of health professions/physical therapy

How will this project involve students?

We completed a related project in my lab last academic year, which was first proposed by first-year physical therapy students in our program. Another set of students will be involved in many aspects of this second project, from assisting with data collection, to data analysis and hopefully writing. In addition, we already have plans for future steps. I have another group of students ready to test other basic clinical questions in the upcoming year using similar technology.

When will the research get underway and conclude?

Research will begin this summer, with data collection completed sometime in the spring of 2025. We don’t have a good sense of how long the clinical testing will take, as we have not tried this type of clinical research with Mayo before. That is the beauty of this seed program: It’s opening doors and building collaborations that were not previously considered.

How did you get connected with this research project?

First-year physical therapy students have a research methods class where they identify a gap in the clinical literature and write a formal research proposal designed to address that gap. We completed the project last year, comparing pelvic floor muscle performance during three different exercises using transabdominal ultrasound to quantify the muscle contractions. It sparked the question: How can we make this method more accessible to clinicians? One answer was to potentially modify this auto-measurement software, which is what we are going to test with this seed grant, to see if it makes the measurements faster and easier. This project is an excellent example of how research is integrated into our physical therapy curriculum.