Kiwi actor Sir Sam Neill has revealed he is cancer-free, admitting at times it “looked like I was on the way out”. <\/p>\n
The Jurassic Park star was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer \u2013 a lymphoma \u2013 five years ago, and has been undergoing treatment since.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Australia’s 7News, Neill said he had undergone CAR T-cell therapy, a type of treatment that genetically modifies blood cells. The treatment was in clinical trials to treat myeloma, another form of blood cancer. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just had a scan just now, and there is no cancer in my body, that\u2019s an extraordinary thing,\u201d Neill said.<\/p>\n
He said that before the treatment, he had been on chemotherapy, and said it was a “pretty miserable business, but it was keeping me alive”. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen the chemo stopped working. I was at a loss, and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn\u2019t ideal, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Describing the treatment as “science at its best”, Neill credited it with his becoming cancer-free. <\/p>\n
He has since become an advocate for the therapy, which has received regulatory approval in Australia and will be rolled out in some states across the coming months. <\/p>\n
The treatment is only available in New Zealand through clinical trials, with one underway at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. <\/p>\n
The institute said its biggest barriers were managing side effects and the cost of the treatment. <\/p>\n
“By combining an improved safety profile with cost-effective manufacturing, we aim to address both issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Its goal was to “confirm the effectiveness and safety of our CAR T-cell therapy and, ultimately, to get it registered for routine use in New Zealand and Australia”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiwi actor Sir Sam Neill has revealed he is cancer-free, admitting at times it “looked like I was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-402874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}