New cancer therapy gets approval to be made in Australia

In a major win for blood cancer patients in Australia, approval's been granted for a potentially lifesaving therapy to be manufactured locally. A state-of-the-art facility in Melbourne is to join just a handful of sites globally permitted to produce the CAR-T cell therapy Kymriah.

Production of the therapy is to begin at the Cell Therapies facility within the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre Source: SBS

Doctors diagnosed Angie Gale with stage-four blood cancer.

But she's in complete remission after having a one-time, personalised treatment known as CAR-T cell therapy.

"It was pretty amazing that in such a short time that you can get those sort of results. It was something I probably wasn't expecting."

In mid-2020, during Victoria's second lockdown, a sample of the 68-year-old's blood was collected and sent to a special lab in the United States.

While there, the white blood cells - or "CAR-T cells" - were separated out, reprogrammed and sent back weeks later as a tailor-made infusion.

Executive Director of Business Ventures at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Associate Professor Dominic Wall, says the CAR-T cells go to work hunting down and destroying cancer cells.

"It's a laser-precision treatment for your cancer that in most instances spares most other normal tissue. So we do think that this is a gentler and kinder treatment for patients."

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