The Cause | Immunotherapy
The Equipment Is Here.
Now It's Time to Put It to Work.
Because of you, something remarkable is about to happen.
Through the extraordinary generosity of donors and participants at last year’s Day of Golf, the 2026 World’s Longest Hockey Game, and the 2026 Toast of the Town, our community raised $2.5 million — enough to acquire the seven specialized machines required to produce and monitor CAR T-cell therapies right here in Edmonton. Those machines have arrived.
Now, thanks to your continued support, the 2026 Day of Golf will fund the next step: putting that equipment to work. This year’s campaign directly supports a groundbreaking CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial led by Dr. Chu and Dr. Sandu — a trial that would not be possible without the foundation this community has already built.
What starts here in Edmonton has the potential to transform cancer care for Albertans — and to establish Alberta as a leader in cell therapy for years to come.
Why Multiple Myeloma — and Why Now
Every year, 300 Albertans hear the words: “You have multiple myeloma.” It’s a rare disease — one that will never make headlines the way more common cancers do, and one that will never attract the flood of industry funding that follows larger patient populations. But that’s precisely why your support matters so much.
For patients with advanced multiple myeloma, the disease is incurable. Treatment buys time; it manages, delays, and stabilizes, but it does not cure. When those treatments stop working, patients run out of road. There is no next line of therapy waiting. Without donor-funded research, these patients have nowhere left to go.
Your generosity changed that. Because of donors like you, we now have the specialized equipment required to manufacture and deliver CAR T-cell therapy — equipment that makes these clinical trials not just possible, but possible right here in Alberta. This didn’t happen by chance. It happened because people chose to give.
And what that giving has unlocked is extraordinary. Edmonton is now one of only four labs in North America — and the only one in Canada — that can manufacture and deliver CAR T-cell therapy under one roof. That distinction matters deeply, because clinical trials don’t just advance science — they determine who gets access to new treatments first. When a trial runs in Alberta, Albertans are first in line. Not patients in Toronto or in New York. Alberta.
This CAR T-cell trial will apply a therapy that has already shown remarkable results in leukemia and lymphoma to multiple myeloma patients who have exhausted every other option. For the first time, these patients will have something they haven’t had in a long time — a fighting chance. And because this trial is happening here, Alberta patients will be the first in Canada to receive it.
But the impact doesn’t stop there. This trial isn’t just about multiple myeloma. It’s about proving what Alberta’s cell therapy platform is capable of. Every successful trial expands what’s possible — for other blood cancers, eventually solid tumours, and possibly diseases beyond cancer entirely. The platform built here, with your support, was designed to grow.
What looks small today is the foundation for something much larger. Rare diseases don’t fund themselves — but the breakthroughs they produce rarely stay rare for long.
Please support the auctions and donate. Every dollar brings this life-saving treatment one step closer to the patients who need it most.