Nyah was 10 when she was given a diagnosis that changed everything: Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a cancer of the blood. 

“My life turned upside down,” recalls Nyah, now 16.  “I had to quit soccer, miss school with my friends and take medicine that only made me feel worse. Words like ‘transfusion,’ ‘chemotherapy,’ and ‘lumbar puncture’ should never be a part of any kid’s vocabulary, but it wasn’t long before they became part of mine.” 

Nyah was in treatment for almost a third of her life. When her cancer relapsed in the fall of 2020, experts at the Alberta Children’s Hospital knew a bone marrow transplant was her only hope. First they would need to get the cancer back into remission to give her the best chance of survival.  

Thankfully, a clinical trial for a new immunotherapy drug called blinatumomab was showing great promise. Patients were achieving remission and experiencing much less – if any – toxicity normally associated with chemotherapy. Nyah’s doctors were able to enrol her in the trial and she was back in remission with few to no side-effects.  

For this, Nyah and her family are extremely grateful.

“Nyah had already been through so much. Serious infections, painful mouth sores, nausea and exhaustion all took a toll,” says her dad, Jared. “It was a good feeling to be giving her a drug that did the job without causing so much collateral damage.”