Sam Neill recently got candid and revealed that he has defeated cancer after years of treatment.
The 78-year-old New Zealand actor gave an interview to Australia’s 7 News, where he reflected on how his life changed after the diagnoses of angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, five years ago.
Voicing his thoughts, Neill said, “I’ve been living with a particular type of lymphoma for about five years and I was on chemotherapy and the pretty miserable business but it was keeping me alive.”
“Then the chemo stopped working. I was at a loss, and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal obviously,” he noted.
The Jurassic Park star had only one option left to save his life, and it was CAR T-cell therapy, “a personalized immunotherapy that genetically engineers a patient’s T cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells,” according to Cleveland Clinic.
Luckily, the CAR T-cell therapy showed results, and he had to take sessions every two weeks for a long period of time.
Neill had been in remission for the past twelve years and now he has been declared cancer-free, as his scans have been showing nothing for a year.
“I’ve just had a scan just now and there is no cancer in my body, that’s an extraordinary thing,” Sam Neill stated.