Jim Allison of the film 'Breakthrough' poses for a portrait at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival Portrait Studio on March 8 in Austin. By Timothy Bella Timothy Bella Deputy editor for Morning Mix Email Bio Follow March 25 at 6:22 AM AUSTIN — It was Christmas Eve 1994, and Jim Allison was testing his theory that T cells, a type of white blood cell that fights viral and bacterial infections, could help the immune system fight cancer.
Sipping on a light beer in a hotel restaurant overlooking downtown Austin, Allison reminisced about his road from small-town Texan who lost multiple family members to cancer to barrier-breaking doctor whose story is now featured in “Breakthrough," a new documentary that premiered earlier this month at the South by Southwest festival.
In the void created by his mother’s passing, Allison, who graduated from high school at 16 and defended evolution against skeptical teachers and lawmakers, turned to science. In 1977, Allison and a colleague wrote in a letter to the journal Nature that their research into T cells suggested that the immune system could not be attacked by cancer cells. From there, he bounced wherever he could go to advance his research on T cells, from Austin and Berkeley, Calif., to New York and Houston.
Fifteen years after publishing his paper on T cell activation, the stubborn Texan saw the Food and Drug Administration approve “Ipi” on March 25, 2011. Among the million or so patients worldwide who have now been treated with “Ipi" or another form of immuno-oncology drug are tens of thousands with melanoma, according to the Cancer Research Institute.
“The real thing that I think we need to do is get out of our silos,” Allison told The Post. “Because there were three pillars of cancer therapy — radiotherapy, surgery and chemotherapy — and now there’s a fourth. The fundamental difference between those and immunology is that immunology is a unifying, possibly synergistic addition to the other things.
“He was like, ‘I’m so ... sick of this. Tomorrow, I gotta deal with it again,’” Haney recalled Allison saying. “And then at 5 in the morning, champagne was popping in the damn hotel room.”
Thank you. I want to see the film
Yes,that is funny huh?
Great story! He deserves more recognition!
hepatoMD Like the guys who discovered that gi ulcers are caused by bacteria
Congrats to the foolish Nobel prize winner
I wonder how big the crowd size was at his Nobel prize ceremony?
pmarshwx foolish guy 1 bear 0 👉👉👉🐻
Endocannabinoid
Who called him foolish? Name them.
OMG thought that was Ron Jeremy for a second! LOL
Science rules!
First, they ridicule you...
Cancer is just radiation.
Too bad the Nobel is not worth anything anymore
So...now he’s just a foolish nobel price winner?
How?