Our Vision

The Alberta Children’s Hospital and University of Calgary are ready to find new cures and provide better care for children and families fighting cancer. We can create new hope for those children whose cancers evade treatment and those who suffer the significant side effects of current treatments. This unprecedented collaboration between child health specialists will turn research into action and undoubtedly propel forward pediatric cancer expertise in Calgary. Standards of care across all areas of the hospital will be elevated and innovations in clinical care will be provided for thousands of children with many other chronic and life-threatening diseases.

Why Start with Cancer?

"My legs couldn't even hold the weight of my body.
He had relapsed - the leukemia had returned."
- Anne, mom to Ty 

• Cancer is the number one cause of death due to disease in children. Today, one in five children with cancer dies.

• Current treatments are so harsh that survival comes at a high price for these children, often creating a host of lifelong challenges. 60% of survivors suffer at least one late side effect, many of which are severe or life-threatening.

• Because excellent cancer care requires excellence in critical areas like Intensive Care, Surgery, Diagnostic Imaging and Immunology, enhancing cancer knowledge and services will improve care for children across all areas of the hospital.

Who Will Benefit?

• We can provide new hope to children for whom all other cancer treatments have failed. More children with cancer will survive and their quality of life will be greatly improved.

• We will also provide innovative and enhanced treatment for children with other medically unresponsive chronic and life-threatening diseases such as anemia, immune deficiency, arthritis, inborn errors of metabolism, Crohn’s and kidney disease.

• What we learn will have international impact and make an invaluable contribution to knowledge and treatment that extends to adults.

Our Expertise

The Alberta Children’s Hospital can lead the nation in child cancer care by building on its proven strengths in two key areas:

• Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT)

  The Alberta Children’s Hospital is home to the largest BMT centre in western Canada. Our hospital is recognized nationally for its high success rates in BMT survival and low rates of graft-vs-host disease, a potentially debilitating or fatal complication of BMT. It is also a national leader in the use of less invasive peripheral blood as the source of stem cells for marrow regeneration. For some children with illnesses such as high-risk or recurrent leukemia, brain tumors, recurrent Hodgkin disease and some solid tumors, BMT offers the best chance for survival.  It provides these children with the chance for a fresh start in rebuilding their blood and immune systems.

• Experimental Therapeutics

  The Alberta Children’s Hospital is the only children’s hospital in western Canada – and only one of three in Canada - with the expertise to conduct Phase I clinical trials: leading-edge research that involves testing promising drugs on patients for whom all other treatments have failed. Extremely sophisticated, these clinical trials add to our understanding of cancers and how to improve treatment of them.  They offer hope to children and families and lead to discoveries that benefit children and adults with cancer and other diseases as well.

  
  The Alberta Children’s Hospital is also the only Canadian member of the elite Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigators Consortium (POETIC). Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and MD Anderson, among the most highly regarded cancer hospitals in the United States, are other members of this prestigious group of research institutions, placing our hospital in world-leading company.

We All Win

Our community’s children could be the first to benefit from new discoveries, treatments and cures - for cancer and many other chronic and life-threatening diseases. Building cancer expertise in Calgary would help children nationally and internationally, and contribute to health knowledge and treatments that extend to adults.

In addition to saving and improving the lives of sick children and families, community support in the fight against childhood cancer can also enhance our ability to retain and recruit top cancer specialists to Calgary - a growing challenge with the chronic shortage of healthcare providers in Canada.

Ultimately, community support for our childhood cancer experts would reap benefits beyond kids, beyond cancer and beyond Calgary.