Mayo Clinic investing $49 million to expand lab operation in Rochester

Mayo Clinic is investing $49 million to expand its large commercial lab in Rochester, a facility that has served as a high-profile component in the statewide response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Construction for the project has started and will continue through 2025, the clinic said in a Tuesday announcement.

The expansion will increase space at the lab's support center on Superior Drive in Rochester, thereby allowing several clinical laboratories to relocate from Mayo's downtown campus.

"The COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on the importance diagnostic testing plays within the overall health care system, and we are committed to expanding our testing to meet the needs of patients we serve at Mayo Clinic and through Mayo Clinic Laboratories," Dr. William Morice, the chair of Mayo's department of laboratory medicine and pathology, said in a statement.

Construction will create new space for five clinical labs as well as room for Mayo Clinic Biopharma Diagnostics, a service used by biopharmaceutical companies. The expansion project also includes new support spaces for lab staff, plus an expanded and updated cafeteria.

Clinicians and researchers at Mayo and around the world can order from the lab's catalog of more than 3,500 tests.

As Minnesota was reporting its first cases of COVID-19 in early 2020, Mayo Clinic Laboratories scrambled to launch a COVID-19 test when diagnostic capacity across the U.S. was severely limited. That year, the lab performed 3.1 million COVID-19 tests overall.

Testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is just one piece of a much larger operation. For years, the lab operation has received thousands of samples every day from health care providers treating patients in 80 different countries.

In 2021, Mayo Clinic Laboratories processed samples from more than 4,000 hospitals and completed more than 27 million tests of all types.

Earlier this year, Mayo announced plans for $785 million in hospital construction projects including an additional 121 beds at its medical center in Mankato as well as a replacement tower for 70 hospital beds in La Crosse, Wis.