Nobel Prize winner James Allison is transforming cancer treatment with drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors
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It was a critical experiment with mice that ultimately led to the answer and eventually to his Nobel-winning discovery. “I had some mice sitting around that had been cured [of their tumors]. For the hell of it, I thought, What would happen if I inject them with [more] tumor cells?” It was a question born of his inquisitiveness and not part of a formal experiment, so there wasn’t a hypothesis he was testing. It turns out nothing happened–the animals didn’t get cancer–and that was a big deal.
By this point, Allison was working at a satellite research facility of MD Anderson Cancer Center. He says he was left “pretty unsupervised,” which meant he could pick and choose his own research projects, so he began testing his theory that T cells could actually bind with and take out cancer cells. Initially he was disappointed, and it would take a few more decades of stubborn dedication for him to understand why.
While other scientists poured their attention into flooring the gas on the T-cell engine, Allison thought, What if you had to both apply the gas and release the parking brake in order for the T cells to get properly revved up? He eventually identified the first molecular brake that protects cancers from destruction by the immune system’s T cells.
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