Heuristic of disruptive therapy: a chat with JP Allison NP

Oct 17, 2018 3:55 PM

Guy-Andre P.

The heuristic approach of disruptive therapy is fascinating. How did you begin in this way? Was your reasoning primarily trigger by immunologic pieces of evidence or did you infer this immunological impeachment through morphologic data?

Oct 17, 2018 5:33 PM

Dr. Jim Allison

The road to developing immune checkpoint blockade as a cancer treatment began for me with a fundamental desire to understand how T cells work. This basic science research led to discovery of the protein structure of the T cell receptor, the T cell ignition switch, during my first academic appointment at MD Anderson in the early 1980s. Later, at the University of California, we identified the co-stimulatory molecule CD28 and its role as the gas pedal of immune response. Then we, and others, established that CTLA-4 acted as the brakes on T cells.

I’ve talked before about the impact of cancer on my family. My mother died of lymphoma when I was 10. Two uncles also died of cancer. In the back of my mind, I was on the lookout to do something about cancer, but I have to emphasize that the driving force of my efforts was to learn all that I could about T cells.

That knowledge led me to ask if blocking the brakes might free the immune system to attack cancer. I didn’t set out to study cancer, and if I had, I believe that focusing on the tumor would have caused me to miss the details that added up to checkpoint blockade.

https://www.statnews.com/2018/10/17/live-chat-nobel-laureate-james-allison-cancer-immunotherapy/