Healing the body

From Cumming School of Medicine Dean

Outstanding health care requires deep connections with an engaged community.

Healing the body with your own cells, microbes and genes

Treatment-resistant cancers can leave patients and families feeling hopeless.

Harnessing data research: AI in the emergency department

Busy emergency departments can be challenging for patients and physicians.

Prioritizing women’s health

Through innovation, research, and compassionate care to empower healthier lives at every stage.

Shaping the future of health care

The future of health care is defined by innovation: a new tool allows researchers to rapidly sequence a patient’s microbiome.

Meet the donors

These CSM donors are advancing health, championing innovation and accelerating breakthroughs.

Traditional cancer treatments aren't effective for everyone, and treatment-resistant cancers can leave patients and families feeling hopeless. Dr. Kevin Hay, MD, and his colleagues are hoping to change that — by turning the immune system itself into a powerful, living medicine.  

Hay is a clinician‑scientist, co‑director of the Living Medicines Initiative at UCalgary and medical director of the Riddell Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy in the Cumming School of Medicine’s Charbonneau Institute. His team is working to take discoveries from the lab and deliver them to patients.

“We’re moving living medicines from the research bench to the patient bedside,” says Hay. “That means not just discovering new therapies, but actually getting them ready for real people.” 

What are living medicines?  

Living medicines are treatments made from living things — like cells or helpful microbes — that can grow and work inside your body to fight disease.  

One example is CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T‑cell therapy, which has already transformed care for some blood cancers. Since cancer cells can evade the immune system in several ways, these new therapies offer a way for immune cells to more precisely recognize and bind to cancer cells.   

Before he was recruited to UCalgary, Hay co-led a clinical trial of made-in-Canada CAR T-cells targeting B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in B.C. This demonstrated that made-in-Canada CAR T-cell products can be delivered safely and effectively. He is now leading another national clinical trial testing a new CAR T‑cell therapy that targets another protein on these B-cell cancers, to help patients who have not responded to previous treatments.

Finding the perfect key  

Alongside these clinical trials, Hay is also co-leading a binder discovery program.  

Binders are the parts of CAR T-cells that recognize and lock onto a disease target — much like a key fitting into a lock. Choosing the right key helps it bind tightly to cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.  

“To make the best CAR T-cells, you need the best binders,” Hay explains. “Until now, we had to use whatever already existed. That limited how well our therapies could work.”  

The binder discovery platform allows researchers to design and test binders themselves. This will eventually create more precise, durable and effective cell therapies — especially for rare and hard-to-treat cancers.  

“For many of these patients, this is about giving them a chance at a therapy that simply didn’t exist before,” says Hay. “That opportunity alone is incredibly meaningful.”

A living gift 

In fact, that was the goal when Harold and Betty Allsopp made a significant gift to the binder discovery work, inspired by their deep interest in the research and their own experiences with cancer.   

Betty is a cancer survivor and says, while she’s grateful for the chemotherapy and radiation that saved her life, she still deals with various ailments caused by those treatments.  

“Even though it was 20 years ago, I still have after-effects from my treatments,” she says. “It was wonderful to think that someone could have a treatment that used their own cells and immune system, and they might not have as many side effects or issues down the road.”   

Adds Harold: “When we were first introduced to living medicine, we were really impressed and intrigued. Research is galloping ahead, and we wanted to contribute to discoveries like this that were going to make a real difference.”   

Immune therapy beyond cancer  

Living medicines are not just changing cancer care — they are opening doors in entirely new areas of medicine.   

They are now showing promise in autoimmune diseases such as lupus and scleroderma, where the immune system mistakenly attacks the body, as well as heart disease, serious infections and much more.   

“What we’re seeing is a real shift in how these medicines are used,” says Hay. “The potential applications are almost endless.”  

Supported by community  

This kind of work is complex, and difficult to fund through traditional grants alone. Donor support — like the gift from the Allsopps — makes it possible to take risks, build capacity and create the foundations for future breakthroughs.  

“Philanthropy is the catalyst,” Hay says. “It’s the seed that allows us to build something new, prove it works and then grow from there.”  

“At the end of the day, it’s about giving patients hope when they need it most.”