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Journalism of Courage
James P Allison of US, who jointly won the Nobel Medicine Prize with Tasaku Honjo of Japan for their discovery of cancer therapy by “inhibition of negative immune regulation”, was intrigued by the immune system right from the time when he was an undergraduate and decided to dedicate his life’s work to understand how it worked.
While Allison studied a known protein that operated as a brake on immune cells and developed the concept into a new treatment for cancer patients, Honjo discovered a new protein that also operated in a similar fashion but under a different mechanism of action. “James Allison studied a protein that functions as a brake on the immune system. He realised the potential of releasing the brake and unleashing our immune cells to attack tumours. He developed this concept into a new approach for treating patients,” a statement said.
READ | James Allison, Tasaku Honjo honoured for ‘immune checkpoint’ cancer therapy
Born on August 7, 1948, Allison’s early interest was medicine and was inspired by his father, who was an ENT specialist. However, it was the influence of his eighth-grade math teacher that steered him to a career in science. When he was just 15 years, Allison was accepted into a National Science Foundation-funded summer science-training program at The University of Texas at Austin.
After his bachelor’s in microbiology and his doctorate in biological sciences from the University of Texas, Allison went to Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation near San Diego, for his postdoctoral fellowship.
Allison’s interest in the immune system was deepened by an experiment he conducted on mice when he was a graduate student. He noticed that mice previously cured of leukaemia with an enzyme, asparaginase, rejected tumours when given a second injection of cancer cells. This led him to wonder whether the immune system could provide a means to combat cancer and strengthened his belief that it could provide a much more effective and less toxic form of therapy than radiation and chemotherapy, the devastating effects of which he had witnessed in both his mother and uncle.
By the 1970s Allison had developed a strong fascination for T-cells, soldiers of the immune system that help defend the body against foreign invaders. In 1982, while working at The University of Texas System Cancer Center, Allison made a breakthrough discovery — identifying the T-cell antigen receptor, which allows T cells to recognize an unusual protein on the surface of another cell.
Six years later, Allison, who was then a professor in the Division of Immunology and Director of the Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Berkeley in California, demonstrated that the molecule CD28 is the “gas pedal” that T cells need for activation.
Allison has been recognised for his breakthrough research in cancer immunology with numerous awards. In 2013, Science magazine named cancer immunotherapy its Breakthrough of the Year, citing Allison’s work as crucial to immunotherapy’s rapid advancement, and The Economist honoured him with its Innovations Award in Bioscience.
