28 January 2020 - Australians battling highly aggressive blood cancers could start a groundbreaking treatment within weeks, after the federal government signed a new funding deal for the therapy that uses the body’s own immune system to fight the disease.

Adult patients with three types of blood cancer that are not responding to conventional treatment will now be able to access Kymriah, a type of CAR T-cell therapy that would cost more than $500,000 per patient without government funding, through Australia's public health system.

Patients' T cells - a type of immune cell - are extracted from the body, genetically re-engineered and programmed to recognise and destroy cancer cells, and then re-implanted into the body.

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