Key points from today’s guests:

Morning Rounds

Dr. Robert Winfield, division director, Acute Care Surgery, The University of Kansas Health System

• Orange is being used today to acknowledge National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
• More and more physicians and healthcare leaders are treating gun violence as a disease as guns kill upwards of 120 Americans every single day and 2022 CDC data showed more than 48,000 people died in homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings.
• Guns recently passed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for children ages one through 17 and it is important to remember the tens of thousands of others who get shot and live to tell about.
• There is an emotional impact on the patient for having suffered an injury in that fashion -- being violently injured by another human.
• Dr. Winfield is currently in Washington, D.C., where he joined a White House Summit on addressing gun violence as a public health issue.

Focus Topic

Shay Franklin, multiple myeloma survivor

• In February of 2009, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
• She was given perhaps only five years to live, but 15 years later, she is now in remission and running in half-marathons.
• She had two stem cell transplants and after all her treatments failed, she then became eligible for CAR-T cell therapy.
• She said fighting cancer took an emotional tool, but you have to find a new way to live your life.
• She praised her friends and family who traveled from Texas, D.C., Chicago, and the region to take care of her.

Dr. Joseph McGuirk, medical director, Blood and Marrow Transplant; division director, Hematologic Malignancies & Cellular Therapeutics, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• We've understood cancer better and better over the years on the shoulders of men and women in laboratories throughout the world.
• In patients who develop cancer, the T cells have let us down and part of that is because the cancer cells have figured out how to make themselves stealth and hide out from the immune system.
• With CAR-T cell therapy, we can take those immune cells out of the blood, we isolate these T cells, and then we genetically rewire them to recognize the cancer cells again.
• Several weeks later, we send them back to the clinic and infuse them into the patient like a blood transfusion. They sweep around the body. They bind to the cancer cells, punch a hole into cancer cells, and release little “Pacman’s” called granzymes that go through and tear up the chromosomes and DNA in the cancer cell and kill the cancer cell.
• And it has been a game changer with stunning results.
• Not only is it safe, but there's effectiveness that has been demonstrated in a remarkable way.
• In the first study with patients who had failed four lines of prior therapy -- all the standard therapies including stem cell transplant -- we saw 97.8 percent response rates and 82 percent complete remissions from CAR-T cell therapy.
• New approvals based on these findings are getting this therapy to patients even earlier now.
• We're in the middle of a revolution in cancer therapeutics. We're seeing completely unprecedented responses, complete remissions, improvements in survival, with a better understanding of the immune system.

Dr. Leyla Shune, hematologist & oncologist, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• With multiple myeloma, the bulk of the patients who go into remission will eventually relapse and will require more treatment.
• However, in the future, we're looking to cure myeloma.
• I tell my patients; this is a marathon -- a long race.
• My goal is for you to live a good life and a normal life. So even though it comes back, we have great tools to fight it.
• For Shay, her CAR-T treatment allows her to be freed from additional chemotherapy.
• Those patients get to just go back to their lives. And this is what I love for patients.
• My message to the myeloma community is the future is bright.

Monday, June 10 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. Hear more about the treatment that brought relief to one woman after decades of lost time due to migraine.

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