A revolutionary new cancer treatment has arrived in New Zealand in the form of a cocoon.
The machine is used for what is called CAR-T cell therapy, which reprogrammes a patient's cells to fight their cancer.
The cocoon is opening up the chance to save lives from cancer.
“We're the first centre in the world to have this particular apparatus,”Dr Rob Weinkove, Haematologist and Clinical Director of the Malaghan Institute tells Newshub.
Until now, only 20 patients a year could get "CAR-T cell cancer therapy", one at a time at Wellington's Malaghan Institute.
It was a manual process but the $200,000 cocoon has changed all that.
"You can basically do everything you would do in a lab, in this one little sealed unit and have multiple in a room,” Malaghan Institute general manager Mike Zablocki tells Newshub.
"It allows us to scale exponentially."
The way it works is, the blood is taken from the patient then the T-Cells, known as the immunity cells, are separated out. Those cells are reprogrammed to identify cancer cells and attack them, making CAR T-Cells.
The patient is conditioned with chemotherapy and then the CAR T-Cells are put back into their body.
"The infusion takes about five minutes, so the administration of the cells is very quick," Weinkove says.
A key advantage of this cocoon is that you can have many of them in a room with just one operator, instead of the current system that manufactures only one person's T-Cells at a time, and needs two people to operate.
"I'm now cured from this blood cancer, it's really effective," Cancer survivor David Downes says.
Downes knows just how life saving this treatment is.
The only CAR-T cell therapy he could get was in America and cost $350,000.
But this cocoon is too late for some.
"Sadly that means many have passed away," Downes says.
The institute won't name a price for the treatment yet but it will be more affordable thanks to a new company, BioOra - a partnership between the Malaghan Institute and Bridgewest Ventures NZ.
It's hoping to treat more than 100 patients a year, and the first could be by Christmas.
In the future, other cancers could also be treated with the cocoons such as breast, lung and brain.
Watch the full story above.
