Sam Neill Says He's Cancer-Free After Chemo Stopped Working

Sam Neill, the 78-year-old star of Jurassic Park, announced he is now cancer-free after battling lymphoma for five years. The actor told Australian outlet 7News that he had been receiving chemotherapy, which he called "pretty miserable business but it was keeping me alive."

When the chemotherapy stopped working, Neill said "it looked like I was on the way out." But cutting-edge CAR T-cell therapy saved his life. This treatment takes immune cells from a patient's blood, modifies them in a lab to better fight cancer, then puts them back in the body.

Neill has been largely out of the spotlight during his cancer battle. Now that he's cancer-free, the actor says "it's time I did another movie." He joins a growing number of cancer patients who have been helped by CAR T-cell therapy when traditional treatments failed.

The treatment represents a major advance in cancer care, especially for blood cancers like lymphoma. While expensive and not available everywhere, it has given new hope to patients who previously had few options.