Doctors told Queensland grandfather Mark Taylor in November last year he was unlikely to survive until Christmas the following month.
Rather than planning holidays with his wife Karen, the couple organised a wake, inviting about 70 family members and friends to celebrate his life while he was still alive.
Nine months later, the 72-year-old is still fighting acute myeloid leukaemia and hoping a Brisbane-developed breakthrough using donated umbilical cord blood will spare future patients from facing the same grim prognosis.
Scientists at Brisbane’s Translational Research Institute have secured almost $4 million in Medical Research Future Fund funding to develop what they describe as a world-first “off-the-shelf” immune cell therapy for acute myeloid leukaemia, an aggressive blood cancer with an average five-year survival rate of about 30 per cent.
The treatment will soon enter a national phase I clinical trial involving 15 patients who have exhausted all standard treatment options.
For Mr Taylor, from Hatton Vale in the Lockyer Valley about 70km west of Brisbane, the breakthrough has come too late to benefit him, but not his determination to help others.
“I was told I wasn’t going to see Christmas, so I thought I’d have a few friends around,” Mr Taylor said.
“But thankfully, I’m still here.
“Research is vital in helping people like me have a better quality of life and survival options, and I’m hoping this new therapy will help other people with AML.”
Current CAR-T therapy has transformed treatment for some blood cancers, but each dose must be individually made from a patient’s own immune cells, a process that can take weeks.
Older AML patients often cannot wait that long, while many have immune systems too weakened by previous treatment to produce an effective therapy.
The Brisbane project instead uses genetically engineered immune cells taken from donated umbilical cord blood to create ready-made treatments that can be frozen and immediately available when patients relapse.
Translational Research Institute chief executive Professor Maher Gandhi who is also leader of Mater Research’s Blood Cancer Research Group, said the project would make advanced cell therapy faster and more accessible.
“This new therapy changes the equation,” Professor Gandhi said.
“By using young, highly potent cord blood cells that are frozen and ready on demand, we can offer an instant lifeline the moment a patient relapses.”
Queensland Cord Blood Bank at Mater Mothers’ Hospital will supply donated cord blood.
Director Phillip Johnson said the breakthrough relied on expectant mothers and their partners choosing to donate their baby’s umbilical cord blood after birth.
“These families, through their generosity, are quite literally providing the building blocks to save the lives of people they will never meet,” he said.