(bright music) - Welcome to the new "At Issue with Mark Welp."

Thanks for joining us as we continue a decades-long tradition here on WTVP.

We've got some really great shows and topics lined up for you, and we hope you enjoy our weekly programs and learn a lot about what's happening in our communities throughout central Illinois.

Well, first tonight, a very serious topic, and that is cancer.

It's a horrible disease that's touched all of our lives, directly or indirectly.

Whether you a family member or a friend has been in the fight, you know it takes a toll on the mind, body, and pocketbook.

Many central Illinois patients have to travel far for treatment, but that could change soon.

We've got a big update on the Cancer Institute being built in Peoria.

I recently talked with Tom Hammerton, the president of OSF Healthcare Foundation, and Ryan Luginbuhl, the OSF Oncology Service Line Director.

We talk about this potentially life-changing and life-saving facility, and how Peoria could become a national destination for cancer treatment.

Tom, it's been almost, well, a little over two years since the groundbreaking for the Cancer Institute, and you're telling me it's gonna open in January.

What's it feel like being in the home stretch?

- Yeah, a little surreal actually right now.

I mean, building wise, it's been two years, but man, the planning started long time ago, probably about seven or eight years when the planning started.

We were all just thrilled and excited for Peoria and our region to get a look, and hopefully no one has to use it, but we know that's not the case.

And if you do, it's nice to have that comfort that we're gonna get the best right here in Peoria.

- It really is, it's a huge undertaking, and I know you've raised a lot of money for it.

It's not a cheap endeavor, but it sounds like it's gonna have state-of-the-art equipment and almost as important, state-of-the-art people.

- Yeah, for sure, yeah, and we we're gonna be raising a hundred million dollars out of a $250 million project, and that's just for the building.

We've got lots more to raise and at OSF, more investment internally for we gotta staff it.

We've got tremendous research that we're planning and already it's undergoing.

And so, all told, it'll be about a $350 to $400 million project, so we call it the, you know, it's our Community's Cancer institute, because they've got a big investment in it.

- And Ryan, I know you've worked at OSF for a long time.

A lot of people with cancer, especially with some very severe cases, may have to go to Chicago or St. Louis or even further away for treatment.

- That's right.

- What is this centralized location gonna mean for some of those people?

- Well, we're gonna have the most incredible, state-of-the-art technology for treatment.

We're gonna have the best access to clinical trials, especially as time goes on.

We know our patients really well, and what they tell us and what we know is that they don't want to go to Chicago.

They don't want to go elsewhere if they don't have to.

And our job and our opportunity here is to really make sure that we provide as many options for our patients close to home as possible.

And I think that's what's so exciting about this project, state-of-the-art technology, best-in-class, world-leading research right here in Peoria.

- Besides having the technology here, I would imagine that for cancer patients, having to travel is just an emotional burden also.

Tom, can you talk a little bit about what it's going to mean for those people here in central Illinois to not have to travel far away?

- Yeah, I actually was one of those that had to do that back in 2003, 2004.

My wife contracted cancer back around that time, and we made the decision to go up to Mayo up in Rochester.

Wonderful place, but the burden, we stayed there for about eight weeks with a one year old and two children back here with grandparents.

It's a burdensome task.

We knew we were getting great care, but actually, coming back from that, I'm like, "We gotta have that here.'

And so, we went to work, I was working at Bradley at the time, but knew I wanted to get into healthcare after that and came to OSF in 2008 and met Dr. McGee, and we immediately started talking about, and planning 15 years ago.

We've added great people.

Ryan's just done a fantastic job of helping fulfill this dream.

And like I said, it's going to be, it's does my heart good to see that those families in the future are not gonna have to go to Mayo.

They're not gonna have to go down to MD Anderson or wherever, we are gonna have the absolute best right here, and that's a pretty special feeling and thing.

- I wanna talk a little bit about the services that people are going to be able to get at the Cancer Institute.

One of them, which I'm sure our viewers recall about a year ago, the proton accelerator, the gigantic piece of equipment and very expensive piece of equipment that was brought into Peoria and then was built around, because of how big it is.

Tell us about proton therapy and why that is such an important thing to have here.

- Well, it's become a growing technology for better standard of care in many, many cancers that require radiation therapy.

It's become more of the gold standard.

It won't eliminate traditional forms of radiation therapy, but it is so important for all childhood cancers that need radiation therapy.

It will allow all of our children to stay locally for treatment under radiation and furthermore, difficult-to-treat cancers that maybe are around critical organs in the body.

This proton machine will allow us to treat in a much safer and more precise way for those more difficult-to-treat cancers that might be around difficult areas of the body.

Think about the head or the neck where you have a lot of different vasculature in the neck that you need more precision and less damage to the other tissue that surrounds that tumor.

Proton therapy does that.

Further, this will be one of the only few flash-capable proton accelerators in the country, and we believe that is the next frontier of proton therapy as well.

And we've invested not only in the important part of the proton machine, but also the next step in the new world of flash proton therapy, where we believe wholeheartedly this will be the next big thing in radiation oncology.

- Yeah, and flash is how much more powerful?

- It's 700- - 700 times- - more powerful.

- more powerful than the current proton therapy.

And we're in a research consortium right now, and they're in human trials, and it just looks very, very promising.

Cuts down the treatment fractions they call 'em, which is 23 different times is typically that an individual has to, in 23 different days, they would have to receive the proton therapy.

This would cut it down to one to three.

So people coming from all over the world, that's a big deal.

- You mentioned research, and I wanna talk about that in just a second, but when I was researching this story, I'm looking, and there's only, I think less than 50 proton accelerators in the whole country, and none of them in a metropolitan area the size of Peoria.

They're all bigger cities, so this is something very unique.

- Absolutely is, and we're way easier to access.

People can get into our center with great ease, and we're well aware of that.

But think about how many people in downstate Illinois and in the Midwest that do not want to drive to a major metropolitan area for such an important treatment, let alone for, as Tom said, 20 to 25 times.

That takes up a significant portion of your time and in your suffering through a very difficult disease.

Let's do it locally.

Let's treat families locally.

And that's why we're investing in this incredible technology.

It's really just about patient care and keeping people close to home.

- Some other exciting things that are going on there or will be going on there, you talked about phase one trials first time in this area.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, so we're embarking on an incredible partnership to really help bring the most cutting edge, breakthrough science to Peoria for the first time ever.

We'll be sourcing trials from all over the world right here.

We're working with an incredible partner called Origin Commercial Ventures, who's a subsidiary of Translational Genomics Institute out of Phoenix, and just think of them as just incredible scientists that really just want to help our patients with us.

And we'll be focused on three main areas.

One is early detection of cancer.

Most, almost everyone knows that if you can detect or you can diagnose a cancer well early on, that the survivability is much, much higher.

So think about deadly, deadly cancers that we have today, like pancreatic cancer.

If you can detect that disease early, you have a much, much higher chance of survivorship, sometimes complete survival, right?

So we're focused on early detection, and we care as much about that as we do about making sure we have the best treatments, like protons and new therapeutic trials.

The second area is really the most difficult-to-treat cancers.

We wanna bring the most cutting-edge science through clinical trials to Peoria for those most difficult-to-treat cancers, which are things like late-stage ovarian cancer, late-stage lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, glioblastoma, things that survivability is less than 5% many times.

There's incredible science happening and developing all over the world.

The trick is really how do you actually get it to a place like Peoria?

And through this partnership, we've been able to execute on that.

And we've already started our first clinical trial, which is around early detection of lung cancer.

And so, the third area of opportunity really is around disease recurrence.

So you wanna detect it early, you want to treat the disease through new science, and then you wanna, if you're fortunate to survive, we wanna make sure we monitor to make sure that cancer's not coming back.

The world of breakthrough science is as much or more on that, the front and back end of that as it is right in the therapeutic side of treatment.

So we really like that holistic model and think that it's just what's right for our patients.

So we're extremely excited about this project.

It's called the Breakthrough Treatment Center.

And again, we've got a start and many more trials here to come, and it's already ramping up before the building even goes live, so that's really exciting.

- Are there any other treatments or unique special things that people can expect from the Cancer Institute that we haven't talked about already?

- Well, I think, go ahead, Tom.

- Well, I was just going to mention the phase one trials is where we're gonna be able to, I don't like to use the word compete when we're talking about healthcare, but compete with the world when it, and we're gonna have literally people coming from all over the world, 'cause we're gonna have trials that no one else is gonna have, life-saving trials that people on their...

They've tried three or four different regimens and none have worked well, or they've had recurrence, and we're gonna provide options.

And we're actually gonna be saving people's lives and curing cancers right here in Peoria, and that's a pretty exciting thing to think about.

- It is, and we mentioned that Peoria, being a smaller community, getting a cancer institute like this, someone who may have to travel, if they have the option between going to downtown New York City or Peoria, Illinois, this is a more affordable place if they have to stay here for a long period of time, so it seems like something that a lot of people would be interested in.

- That's exactly right, and it's the whole continuum of care.

It's, as Ryan was talking, it's the prevention, it's certainly the treatment and then the supportive services, after someone is cured of cancer, there's just lots of things to consider.

And we're there to provide all of them, not just to survive, but actually thrive.

And that actually has started within our children's hospital with the Heller Center.

John Heller and Ned Heller had provided a wonderful gift to create the Heller Center, which in essence is those supportive services that allow a child to not only survive, but to thrive.

And we're gonna translate that over to the adult side as well, so just lots of wonderful, wonderful things happening.

- Well, I'm sorry, go ahead.

- Yeah, I was gonna say, I think the other real opportunity for us to improve the way care is delivered from today or yesterday and into the future with the new institute is we not only have protons for treatment, we have all of the imaging equipment needed to rapidly work people up when they have a diagnosis.

Obviously, the scariest time is the unknown.

I found a mass.

I found a bump on my chest.

I found something suspicious.

The time it takes to get that figured out can be just awful.

With the new center, it will allow us to rapidly work up suspicious lumps and bumps in a really fast timeframe, so people aren't waiting.

We can do single-day workups for every type of cancer in the new institute, so that will be something new that we'll be able to provide, because we now have all the capacity needed with the imaging equipment in the building.

So think about MRIs, PET CTs, CTs, ultrasound, all the right imaging equipment we need to help diagnose and ensure that we get the time to treatment as a short a period of time as possible.

The new building will also feature incredible space for our physicians.

We have a base of incredible doctors here, and we'll continue to be hiring world-class physicians to Peoria, which is another great opportunity with this vision that we've created and partnered with our community.

And so, there will be an incredible amount of multidisciplinary space.

Multidisciplinary care is the hallmark of good cancer care, and we will ensure that happens in the new building.

Right now, in Peoria, care happens in multiple locations and clinics, and that's not on purpose, it's just now we have an opportunity with one building to put everything in one space.

There's an incredible amount of power that can happen by just physically locating all of our wonderful doctors, support staff, nurses, all together in one space.

- Yeah, in addition to the staff that are already here, I imagine you're gonna have to hire some more folks, Tom, and- - Yeah, a bunch.

- (laughs) When bringing those doctors to Peoria, I guess, what kind of, besides fighting cancer, what kind of an economic impact is that gonna have on our area, and how many people is the new center going to employ eventually?

- Well, I think we estimated over the course of the next five years, there's gonna be a ramp up, but we estimate in that time period, an additional thousand people will be employed when you consider our research and the treatment and the preventative care and all those spaces.

In addition to that, something that we really haven't talked about as much, but I think will have an equal or maybe even more impact, is all the innovation that happens as a result of these folks getting together and the research happening, these startups, and we're seeing it now from jump.

We're seeing it now as our children's hospital doctors collaborate together.

There's startups that turn into some really big businesses, really right here in Peoria.

So the whole ecosystem around healthcare, and in this case, cancer is gonna just change the landscape of the Peoria area, it just absolutely is.

- Well only a few months until the Cancer Institute opens.

It's a very exciting time.

And gentlemen, we thank you for your time and explaining to us how this is gonna impact all of our lives.

- Thanks for the opportunity.

- Thanks so much for your support.

and thanks for the community support too.

Just couldn't do without our community and patient families, our donors, incredible, incredible.

And our sisters at OSF are just dedicated to the mission that they started 150 years ago, and that's what's so exciting.

- Best of luck with everything.

- Thank you so much, Mark.

- Thank you for that, Mark.

- Back here with my colleague, Phil Luciano, who will be joining us every week to give his unique insight on these issues that we're talking about.

Phil, the center looks pretty amazing, especially that proton beam therapy, could be a game changer.

- There's so much about it that's remarkable and promising to Peoria.

And when we were talking about this, we were wondering, okay, we can see what it looks like, but what is it like to go through this sort of treatment, 'cause it's so new?

And som we caught up with Keelin McGee.

She is a Peoria native.

She went to Notre Dame High.

And then she went out to Washington DC where she still works today, she's 34 years old.

But six years ago she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma of the chest and neck, some pretty serious stuff.

And the doctor said, "Well, we can try traditional chemotherapy."

But then they all said, "Well, you know what, "there's this proton therapy "and maybe you want to check that out," and she decided to.

Like a lot of Peorians until now, she had to go hours and hours away to get her therapy.

And when she started it, she was a little intimidated, she said, 'cause this is something you'd never seen before, but afterwards, totally happy with her decision.

Well, let's let her explain what it's like.

- Keelin in Peoria, we've heard a lot of great things about proton therapy.

We are hoping here right now, you can tell us a little bit about what it's like to undergo that therapy.

What is that like?

You walk into the room and what does it look like and what do you undergo?

- Sure, it's a pretty big machine.

It takes up nearly half the room, and you only see a little piece of the actual machine, but it's pretty easy.

You lie down, and your therapists get you all set up in your immobilization device, if you have one, so you don't move during treatment.

And they take a few x-rays to make sure you're perfectly aligned, and then they move you under the snout of the machine, is what I call it, and it drops just right above wherever your treatment area is, and it's only a few minutes while the therapists go outta the room just for their own safety, and you stay in the room.

And then the beam is on.

Treatment, for me, was only about two minutes long, so it wasn't too terribly long.

I got to listen to my favorite music, which was U2, and then therapists came back in once that was over, and then I was really on my way.

I had about a 30-minute time slot each day where I came in, changed, got ready, got on the table, was treated, and then was able to go about my day still, kept working and everything, so.

- I think some people might be familiar with an MRI or a CT. Is it like that and is it different in little ways?

If you could compare that?

- Sure.

So with my treatment, I of course, had a lot of CTs, MRIs for the diagnosis of my cancer.

But it's a bit different in that you know if you move, it can be a little more detrimental than if it's just a CT or MRI.

So if you're familiar though, with those modalities of the different scans, it helps create that familiarity, and you do the similar thing, lying as still as you can while the image or treatment is on.

So if you're okay and comfortable with those scans, it's not too dissimilar than those.

- But you can't move at all obviously, because it's the proton therapy, you just gotta be still.

- Right, right, and they help create devices, masks, or a body mold that help you keep in place, so it's easier than you think, yeah.

- And what's the noise?

I know you had U2 playing, but what's the noise of the machine, what does that sound like?

- Yeah, over the sounds of Bono & The Edge, I heard what sounded like rolling thunder and to kind of escape everything that was going on, I actually imagined myself back home in Peoria, listening to the sounds of a summer thunderstorm rolling in, and that's kind of what it sounds like, slowly thunder clouds coming in is kind of what I always described it as.

- So not unpleasant, just a different type of experience.

- No, and you don't smell anything.

You don't feel any pain, at least while you're going through treatment.

Side effects slowly accumulate, but it's painless.

Just the thought of it's scarier than the actual treatment.

And proton therapy is great, and that has minimal side effects, and you can continue, I would go on walks every day, I continued working.

So for me it was, especially compared to chemotherapy, a whole lot easier.

- And what's your prognosis now?

- I've been in remission for six years, and my five-year mark had my first daughter, so knock on wood, all is going really well.

- Great, well, Keelin McGee, thank you for your insight today and best of luck to you.

- Thank you so much, Phil.

- Well, happy to hear that she's doing well.

- It's amazing, that's a lot.

I think we're gonna hear a lot of those stories now, but with the other positive part about, hey, I didn't have to go to six miles away here or there, you can do it right here.

Did I say six miles, six hours away.

(laughs) - Six hours, yeah, if it was six miles, that'd be okay, but yeah, this is gonna be big for central Illinois.

Well, speaking of big, we've got some programming changes here on WTVP, a new host of "At Issue."

Phil will be joining me every week.

And Phil's show with Julie Sanders, "You Gotta See This" is immediately following "At Issue."

- I think this is a great opportunity.

It's got an hour of all local material, local stories, local issues, local, local, local.

And I know you've been in this business a long time, and you probably have heard over the years, "Why don't you have more positive stuff?

"Why don't you have more positive stuff?"

Well, this is an hour of that kind of programming.

- Yeah, "At Issue," we're gonna tackle some pretty tough subjects, but the good thing about that is, right after that, after you've, (exhales), exhaled, you can watch "You Gotta See This," which has got a lot of fun stories.

What are we gonna see this week?

- We're gonna see what the, well coming up this month on PBS is "The American Buffalo."

It's a Ken Burns documentary.

Those are always good.

So because of that, Julie headed out to Wildlife Prairie Park to check out their bison.

And all I wanna know is, did she ride the bison?

- Oh!

- You gotta see this.

(laughs) - You, you can't find out if you don't see it.

- And you're also on there sometimes.

You pop up with some interesting stories.

And I have no idea what this is, golf course ecology?

- Yeah, I've been doing a lot of stories on the environment and there's some controversy with golf courses.

Some people think you're destroying wildlife, you're wasting water, you're loading up the place with fertilizer and weed killer.

Well, I went out to the Peoria Club, the Country Club of Peoria, I should say.

- There you go.

- And talked to their head groundskeeper there.

He tells me what they're doing to help the environment and keep those greens looking good, and we're gonna talk about that coming up.

- We also have on the show, it is a story, a strange coming together of a very, very professorial professor, the type of guy...

This guy looks like a professor and the world of Indiana Jones and a snake.

You'll have to just tune in to figure all that out and see what's going on.

- I'm gonna sit far away from the TV.

I don't like snakes, just like Indiana Jones.

Well, we appreciate you joining us for our inaugural episode of the new "At Issue."

Remember, we're gonna be here every Thursday night at 7:00, followed by "You Gotta See This" at 7:30.

You can also follow us at wtvp.org and on the Facebook, as they say.

We've got a lot of good content that we're gonna put up there if you ever miss one of our shows, and we always want to hear from you too.

Go to our Facebook page, WTVP.

Leave your comments, questions, suggestions for future topics- - Love it.

- We always wanna hear those.

All right, thank you Phil, and thank you for joining us.

"You Gotta See This" starts in just a minute.

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