Key points from today’s guests:

Morning Rounds – Summary of Current News

Dr. Al-Ola Abdallah, hematologist & oncologist; director, Plasma Cell Disorder Clinic, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• An FDA panel has voted to expand approval for two types of CAR-T therapy.
• This provides earlier immunotherapy for multiple myeloma.
• Not only have studies shown there's an efficacy, but also quality improvements such as improved quality of life.
• These patients receive only one treatment and that is for the rest of their life if they stay in remission, compared to the standard of care that the patients have to continue to be on treatment in order to keep them in remission.
• We want the best quality of care and the best quality of treatment for our myeloma patients.

Focus Topic

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System

• Using human immune cells to kill cancer is just one example of how decades of research can lead to meaningful change.
• There are thousands of people within The University of Kansas Health System and The University of Kansas Medical Center who are devoted to trying to find the causes and cures for diseases are studying ways to improve patient care.
• Much of that research goes on behind the scenes, but you might benefit from it, even if you've never set foot inside our Health System.
• Research at the University of Kansas Medical Center has exploded in growth, not just in the past 10 to 20 years, but even in the past five years.
• In fiscal year 2023, there has been $120 million in federally funded research for KUMC. This is part of $180 million in total research spending – a 50 percent increase since 2019.

Dr. Robert Simari, executive vice chancellor, KU Medical Center

• We had to change culture on funding for research when we began about 10 years ago.
• Running research is like running a symphony. When you run a symphony, you have to have ticket holders, and you have to have benefactors. And the ticket holders judge the value of the symphony on a day-to-day basis. For us, the NIH are the ticket holders. They judge the quality on a day-to-day basis and only support the best and the brightest.
• I take great pride in the research that's going on here. We are studying cellular based therapies for heart disease, vascular disease, other things, but it's been really interesting to see those people who are working with the tools of genetic therapies, the viruses and vectors that could use to put genetic information into cells and in that with CRISPR, that field is just taken off. We're going to cure sickle cell disease, we're going to cure a number of disease, mostly from these people who stayed with the research.
• The community benefits so greatly from our research on campus. Number one, it's an economic driver. Every grant we get generates new jobs and new opportunities for the community.
• Number two is that our research brings the best and brightest physicians, physician scientists and research teams in into our community. And those people take care of patients every day and do an outstanding job.
• Number three is the clinical trials that we bring. There are now 1,000 clinical trials ongoing in the in the Health System as part of the Medical Center's clinical arm and in each one of those represents an opportunity for a patient to be enrolled in a new opportunity for cure, or management or diagnosis.
  
  

Peter Smith, Ph.D., senior associate vice chancellor of research, KU Medical Center; senior associate dean of research, KUMC School of Medicine

• Centers are really important research drivers. They're funded by the NIH. They bring together investigators and technologies in a particular area of focus.
• We've gone to basically six of those, with two more on the way, so we've seen a lot of growth in the large research operation areas.
• I think a key part of the success is the way we value our faculty, our staff, and our trainees and how we support them with the research.
• I've been looking at mechanisms that result in that adaptation of the nervous system for a number of systems -- looking at reproduction, wound healing, etc.
• After a heart attack, there are changes in the innovation of the heart that can lead to actually sudden death in some situations. So we've been trying to understand what drives those changes in the nervous system.
• We are doing great things for the state of Kansas and for the nation and I’m proud to be part of that.

Jacob Sosnoff, Ph.D., associate dean of research, KUMC School of Health Professions

• Health professions are 80-85 percent of the healthcare team. So if you take out the doctors, which are incredibly important, and take out the nurses, which are incredibly important, everything else that happens is health professions – the physical therapist, occupational therapist, dieticians, hearing therapists, respiratory therapists, lab sciences, and more.
• Research is wrapped around these health professions so we can provide the evidence base.
• I study movement, walking, and balance, and that led to understanding why people fall -- so I deal mainly with neurological populations and older adults.
• We're looking at different ways to prevent traumatic brain injury from falls.
• Research is important to help patients.

COVID Update

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System

• The hospital COVID count for this week is at 12 inpatients, the same number as last week.
• We are seeing more influenza and RSV hospitalizations than COVID patients.
• Influenza activity is still fairly high and we know people are on spring break or have just completed or will be going on spring break, so it is very important to stay protected during that time.

Friday, Mar. 22 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. An 86-year-old patient accidentally swallowed her hearing aid battery when she had it sitting in a cup next to her pills. Emergency surgery was needed before it burned a hole in her stomach.

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