Late last month, Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill put the treatment in the spotlight, revealing his stage three cancer was in remission after undergoing CAR T-cell therapy as part of a clinical trial in Sydney. He stopped short of describing his remission as a miracle – the success, he said, was “science at its best”

The history of CAR (for “chimeric antigen receptor”) T-cell therapy is one of small discoveries accumulating over decades, leading to major advances in patient care. Pioneered in the 1990s, the therapy has exploded in the past decade. Four CAR T-cell therapies have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in Australia since 2018. All are for blood cancers.

The success of those therapies is increasing enthusiasm among researchers and clinicians that CAR T-cell therapies will soon become a major weapon in the battle against cancer. It is now being tweaked to combat solid tumours, with promising early signs of success tempered by the difficulties in tailoring T-cells to find their target. The future may even see it become an injectable.