It’s a life affirming award, literally. The 2018 Nobel prize in medicine awarded jointly to Texan Jim Allison, chair of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and to Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University in Japan.
These Nobel laureates have "established an entirely new principle for cancer therapy", said the committee in Stockholm.
The breakthrough idea was to turn on the body's own immune system to attack cancer ... in essence, treating the immune system rather than the tumor.
Jim Allison, is credited with the first drug to act as an immune checkpoint blockade...in the treatment of late stage melanoma. In the 7 years since, immunotherapy is expanding into other cancers, like lung, kidney, colorectal, liver and more…and into research the world over.
Dr Allison began his research at U-T MDA’s science facility in Smithville in 1977. And now oversees some 100 immunotherapy clinical trials underway at MDA Cancer Center right now.,