Queensland Premier Peter Beattie of Australia announced here Wednesday that Hong Kong and Australian experts will cooperate in clinical trials of a new therapy for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC).

The clinical trial project involved experts from the Australian Center for Vaccine Development at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) and the University of Hong Kong. The new treatment stimulates the immune system by "training" the patients' blood to recognize and destroy the cancer cells.

Beattie said the project will be done on a not-for-profit basis and an amount of about 16 million HK dollars (about 2.06 million U.S. dollars) was donated by Hong Kong corporations and organizations to be used as the cost of the project.

The clinical tests will be divided into phase one and two, which will involve 30 and 300 NPC patients, respectively, from the Queen Mary Hospital of Hong Kong, said Beattie.

Blood will be taken from these patients and sent to QIMR's research center where it will be modified to stimulate the immune killer cells of the body to eradicate the cancer cells, said QIMR Director Michael Good.

"The patients' killer cells will then be returned to Hong Kong and injected back into the trial patients to stimulate their own immune system to identify NPC as foreign and destroy the tumor cells," he added.

Apart from medical study projects, Beattie said he would like to see more collaborations in other aspects between Queensland and southern part of China including Hong Kong like tourism, resources and technology.

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