Construction has been on the rise in recent years at the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa, home of Children’s Wisconsin, Froedtert Hospital, the Medical College of Wisconsin and Versiti Blood Research Institute.
Between 2019 and fall 2023, Children’s Wisconsin embarked on its $385 million Milwaukee Campus Improvement Project.
In November, business leaders and government officials celebrated the groundbreaking for the 212,000-square-foot, $226 million Forensic Science and Protective Medicine Facility.
As that project moves ahead, partners at Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin are awaiting the completion of expansion projects aimed at better treating and studying cancer, while the Versiti Blood Research Institute prepares to break ground on an addition that will double its research capacity.
Each located on the bustling MRMC campus, the expansions are aimed at better serving southeastern Wisconsinites with life-threatening illnesses, while growing the region’s reputation as a center of medical innovation.
Targeting tumors with protons
At Froedtert Hospital’s Clinical Cancer Center, leaders recently celebrated the placing of the last structural beam of an 18,654-square-foot addition that will soon house a 9,400-square-foot MEVION S250i Proton Therapy System and treatment room.
The project, which began construction in May of last year, will provide certain cancer patients – among them children and adults with tumors in the head and neck – a safer, targeted way to treat tumors with radiation without damaging nearby healthy tissues. The new treatment option, which is slated to be available by mid-July, could treat around 350 patients per year.
Different than the more common photon radiation therapy, which delivers X-rays to the tumor and surrounding areas, proton therapy delivers a targeted dose of radiation directly to a cancer tumor using high-energy beams of proton particles.
While photons pass through the cancer and out the other side, protons stop at the tumor, protecting the healthy cells and tissues surrounding the cancerous mass.
This is especially important when treating children as well as adults with tumors near vital organs, said Dr. Christopher Schultz, chairman of radiation oncology, researcher and MCW faculty member with the Froedtert & MCW Cancer Network.
The relative effectiveness of proton therapy is also slightly higher, Schultz noted.
“You get a little bigger bang for the buck, if you will,” he said, adding that proton therapy also offers the possibility of giving higher, faster doses of radiation.
“Another aspect that is being explored is something called flash, which is the ability to give radiation at a very high-dose rate. What we (currently) give over a course of treatment you can give in a matter of seconds,” he said.
The addition comes as UW Health is nearing completion of a multi-treatment room proton therapy system in Madison. But Schultz said more options for such treatment in Wisconsin and the Midwest is a good thing. Currently, the closest hospitals offering proton therapy are Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago.
Oncologists and researchers have known about the benefits of proton therapy since the 1980s, Schultz said, but up until now the machines, called cyclotrons, needed to create the proton beams were simply too big and expensive for many regional hospitals to accommodate or afford. Froedtert was able to add a “new tool to its toolbox,” because manufacturers are now able to construct much smaller cyclotrons. While before, such treatment might’ve required the hospital to acquire a massive site away from its main campus, today it can make an addition to its existing cancer treatment wing.
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Studying cancer
While doctors, nurses and physicists at Froedtert prepare for the launch of a new cancer treatment, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin are anxiously awaiting the completion of a 150,000-square-foot, $100 million cancer research building.
Designed to centralize the college’s cancer research programs, which currently consist of nearly 700 researchers in 135 labs campus wide, the state-of-the-art building will enable more synergistic cancer research to take place.
In addition to boasting cutting-edge instrumentation – which will include equipment like mass spectrometers used for measuring proteins, lipids and nucleic acids as well as special rooms needed for utilizing radiation, nitrogen and certain kinds of conductivity – the space will provide room for hundreds of researchers.
“There’ll be 400 to 500 people in that building working at various levels, undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, physicians and Ph.D. researchers,” said Gustavo Leone, Ph.D., director of the MCW Cancer Center and the Dr. Glenn R. and Nancy A. Linnerson endowed chair for cancer research.
Having that many researchers all in one space is one of the biggest benefits of the new building, Leone said, which is being constructed with the help of a $10 million state grant.
“There’s no single physician or researcher that knows everything about cancer, so collaboration is really key, especially when those physicians and researchers come from various disciplines,” he said. “Being in the same building, stopping by for coffee, having a conversation that you didn’t expect or going to a seminar … (all of these things can provide) new knowledge, new connections, new collaborations.”
Those collaborations coupled with the special instrumentation should help answer the kinds of questions researchers have long been asking about the origins of cancer, Leone said. Questions like: How does a tumor progress from being benign to malignant? How do patients respond to specific treatments? Why do they respond and then revert back to being cancerous again?
MCW cancer researchers are currently studying how certain biomarkers can provide clues as to how aggressive a certain cancer might be.
“These are really important questions, and they require incredibly sophisticated instrumentation, but also expertise,” Leone said. “You will have scientists that know a lot about math and physics right next to chemists and radiologists and folks that are in molecular biology and mouse genetics. Every piece, every room, every space, has an intention.”
The new building will also have spaces on the first floor that are open to the public, so people can come in to talk to scientists and trainees, helping MCW better share its work and mission with the public, Leone said. The building is slated to open in mid-2025.
Versiti expansion
As cancer researchers at MCW await the completion of the new building on their campus, those working in blood cancers will also be eagerly awaiting the construction of Versiti Blood Research Institute’s 79,000-square-foot expansion.
Slated to break ground later this year, the $79 million addition, which is also receiving a $10 million state grant, will essentially double the nonprofit’s research capabilities.
Nearing capacity within its current footprint, the additional space will allow the research institute to expand its current team of 31 principal scientists to approximately 50 in the next five to seven years. Each new scientist will bring a team of up to 10 new colleagues, increasing the total number of researchers and staff there from approximately 200 to more than 350.
With more researchers, the hope is that Versiti will make even greater strides in understanding and developing more novel and less toxic therapies for blood disorders.
“Renowned for our innovative and leading research and extensive knowledge of bleeding and clotting disorders, we are now broadening our focus to include blood cancers and immune system diseases,” said Chris Miskel, president and chief executive officer of Versiti. “This initiative signifies a transformative phase where we can make a positive difference in the health and welfare of patients and families, both locally in Milwaukee and globally.”
