James P. Allison

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James Allison
James P. Allison EM1B5525 (46207775441).jpg
Allison at the Nobel press conference in Stockholm, December 2018
Born
James Patrick Allison

(1948-08-07) August 7, 1948 (age 75) [1]
Alice, Texas, U.S.
Education University of Texas, Austin (BS, MS, PhD)
Known for Cancer immunotherapy
Spouses
Malinda Bell
​
​
(m. 1969;div. 2012)​
​
(m. 2014)​
Children1
Awards Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2014)
Massry Prize (2014)
Tang Prize (2014) [2]
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (2014)
Harvey Prize (2014)
Gairdner Foundation International Award (2014)
Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (2015)
Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (2015) [3]
Wolf Prize (2017)
Warren Alpert Foundation Prize(2017)
Balzan Prize (2017)
Sjöberg Prize (2017)
King Faisal International Prize (2018)
Albany Medical Center Prize (2018)
Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research (2018) [4]
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2018)
Scientific career
Fields Immunology
Institutions M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Weill Cornell Medicine
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, San Francisco
University of Texas at Austin
Thesis Studies on bacterial asparaginases: I. Isolation and characterization of a tumor inhibitory asparaginase from Alcaligenes ?Eutrophus. II. Insolubilization of L-Asparaginase by covalent attachment to nylon tubing  (1973)
Doctoral advisor Barrie Kitto

James Patrick Allison (born August 7, 1948) [1] is an American immunologist and Nobel laureate who holds the position of professor and chair of immunology and executive director of immunotherapy platform at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.

Contents

His discoveries have led to new cancer treatments for the deadliest cancers. He is also the director of the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) scientific advisory council. He has a longstanding interest in mechanisms of T-cell development and activation, the development of novel strategies for tumor immunotherapy, and is recognized as one of the first people to isolate the T-cell antigen receptor complex protein. [5] [6]

In 2014, he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences; in 2018, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Tasuku Honjo. [7] [8]

Early life

Allison was born on August 7, 1948, in Alice, Texas, the youngest of three sons of Constance Kalula (Lynn) and Albert Murphy Allison. [9] He was inspired by his eighth-grade math teacher to pursue a career in science, spending a summer in a National Science Foundation–funded summer science-training program at the University of Texas, Austin, and completing high-school biology by correspondence course at Alice High School. [10] [11] Allison earned a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from University of Texas, Austin, in 1969, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He earned his doctor of philosophy degree in biological science in 1973, also from UT Austin, as a student of G. Barrie Kitto. [12] [13]

Career

From 1974 to 1977, Allison worked as postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in California. Then he worked as assistant biochemist and assistant professor at MD Anderson to 1984. [14] He was appointed a professor of immunology and director of the Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley in 1985 and was concurrently appointed professor at the University of California, San Francisco from 1997. [15]

In 2004, he moved to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City to become the director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and the chair of the immunology program as well as the Koch chair in immunologic studies and attending immunologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He was a professor of Weill Cornell Medicine and co-chair of the Department of Graduate Program in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences from 2004 to 2012, and also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator until 2012, when he left to join the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2012. Since 2012 he has been chair of immunology at M.D. Anderson. [14]

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine), and is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is director of the Cancer Research Institute scientific advisory council. Previously, he served as president of the American Association of Immunologists.[ citation needed ] He is on the Research Advisory Board of Candel Therapeutics [16] and Lytix Biopharma. [17]

Allison serves as a commentator in the Cancer documentary.

Research

Cancer Therapy by Inhibition of Negative Immune Regulation (CTLA4, PD1) 11 Hegasy CTLA4 PD1 Immunotherapy.png
Cancer Therapy by Inhibition of Negative Immune Regulation (CTLA4, PD1)

Allison trained at Scripps Research under tumor-immunologist Ralph Reisfeld, Ph.D., professor emeritus, researching human leukocyte antigens (HLA) and T-cells and exploring the role HLA proteins play in enabling the immune system to distinguish self from invaders. In 1977, Allison and a colleague, G. N. Callahan, reported in a letter to Nature that they had found evidence that the immune system was prevented from attacking cancer cells due to antigens’ association with additional proteins. Finding the factors that inhibited the immune attack on cancer has been key to developing checkpoint-blockade cancer immunotherapies. [15]

In 1982, Allison first discovered the T-cell receptor. [18] Allison's research to elucidate mechanisms of T-cell responses was conducted in the 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley. [19] [20] In the early 1990s, Jim Allison showed that CTLA-4 acts as an inhibitory molecule to restrict T-cell responses. In 1996, Allison was the first to show that antibody blockade of a T-cell inhibitory molecule (known as CTLA-4) could lead to enhanced anti-tumor immune responses and tumor rejection.

This concept of blocking T-cell inhibitory pathways as a way of unleashing anti-tumor immune responses and eliciting clinical benefit laid the foundation for the development of other drugs that target T-cell inhibitory pathways, which have been labeled as "immune checkpoint therapies". [10] This work ultimately led to the clinical development of ipilimumab (Yervoy), which was approved in 2011 by the FDA for the treatment of metastatic melanoma. [21]

Allison's research is in molecular immunology of the T-cell antigen receptor complex, co-stimulatory receptors, and other molecules involved in T-cell activation. He is particularly interested in finding signals that lead to differentiation of naive T-cells and also those that determine whether antigen receptor engagement will lead to functional activation or inactivation of T-cells. Once defined, the basic studies are used to develop new strategies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and immunotherapy of cancer. Most recently he has been interested in understanding the immune responses in cancer patients who respond to immunotherapy. He established the immunotherapy platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center to study immune responses in cancer patients. [22]

Honors

According to a quantitative analysis, Allison was the top-ranking recipient of the most prestigious international science awards in the period 2010–2019, having received 13 of the top 40 such awards in any field of science. [23]

In 2011 Allison won the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award for Biotechnology and Medicine [24] and was awarded the American Association of Immunologists Lifetime Achievement Award. [25] In 2013 he shared the Novartis Prize for Clinical Immunology. In 2014 he shared the first Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science with Tasuku Honjo, [2] won the 9th Annual Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research of the National Foundation for Cancer Research, received the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Canada Gairdner International Award, [26] the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, [27] the Massry Prize [28] and the Harvey Prize [29] of the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa. In 2015, he received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. [3] and Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. [30]

In 2017 he received the Wolf Prize in Medicine, [31] the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize [32] and the Balzan Prize for Immunological Approaches in Cancer Therapy (this prize jointly with Robert D. Schreiber). [33] In 2018 he received the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, [34] the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. [35]

He, along with Tasuku Honjo, was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2018 for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. [36] [37] [38]

He is the subject of the 2019 documentary film "Jim Allison: Breakthrough" directed by Bill Haney. [39] Allison received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2019. [40]

Personal life

Allison married Malinda Bell in 1969. They have one son, Robert Allison, born in 1990, who is, as of 2018, an architect in New York City. Allison and Malinda lived separate lives for many years and eventually divorced in 2012. Allison met Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD through Dr. Lloyd Old in 2004. Allison and Sharma became collaborators and friends and married 10 years later in 2014. Allison is stepfather to Thalia Sharma Persaud, Avani Sharma Persaud and Kalyani Sharma Persaud. [41]

Allison's mother died of lymphoma [15] when he was 10. His brother died of prostate cancer in 2005.

He plays the harmonica for a blues band of immunologists and oncologists called the Checkpoints. He also plays with a local band called the Checkmates. [41]

Related Research Articles

Immunotherapy or biological therapy is the treatment of disease by activating or suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies, while immunotherapies that reduce or suppress are classified as suppression immunotherapies. Immunotherapy is under preliminary research for its potential to treat various forms of cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cancer immunotherapy</span> Artificial stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer

Cancer immunotherapy (immuno-oncotherapy) is the stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer immunology and a growing subspecialty of oncology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rolf M. Zinkernagel</span> Swiss immunologist (born 1944)

Rolf Martin Zinkernagel AC is a professor of experimental immunology at the University of Zurich. Along with Peter C. Doherty, he shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Rosenberg</span> American cancer researcher

Steven A. Rosenberg is an American cancer researcher and surgeon, chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland and a Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He pioneered the development of immunotherapy that has resulted in the first effective immunotherapies and the development of gene therapy. He is the first researcher to successfully insert foreign genes into humans.

Emil Raphael Unanue was a Cuban-American immunologist and Paul & Ellen Lacy Professor Emeritus at Washington University School of Medicine. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He previously served as chair of the National Academy of Sciences Section of Microbiology and Immunology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ipilimumab</span> Pharmaceutical drug

Ipilimumab, sold under the brand name Yervoy, is a monoclonal antibody medication that works to activate the immune system by targeting CTLA-4, a protein receptor that downregulates the immune system.

The William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology is presented annually by the Cancer Research Institute, to scientists who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of basic and tumor immunology and whose work has deepened our understanding of the immune system's response to disease, including cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph M. Steinman</span> Canadian immunologist and cell biologist

Ralph Marvin Steinman was a Canadian-American physician and medical researcher at Rockefeller University, who in 1973 discovered and named dendritic cells while working as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Zanvil A. Cohn, also at Rockefeller University. Steinman was one of the recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Programmed cell death protein 1</span> Mammalian protein found in humans

Programmed cell death protein 1(PD-1),. PD-1 is a protein encoded in humans by the PDCD1 gene. PD-1 is a cell surface receptor on T cells and B cells that has a role in regulating the immune system's response to the cells of the human body by down-regulating the immune system and promoting self-tolerance by suppressing T cell inflammatory activity. This prevents autoimmune diseases, but it can also prevent the immune system from killing cancer cells.

Nicholas P. Restifo is an American immunologist, physician and educator in cancer immunotherapy. Until July 2019, he was a tenured senior investigator in the intramural National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland. Nicholas was an executive vice president of research at Lyell based in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benaroya Research Institute</span>

Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) is a Seattle, Washington non-profit organization that conducts medical research on many diseases and immune disorders, including autoimmune disease. It is affiliated with Virginia Mason Health System, and is located on the campus of Virginia Mason Medical Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tasuku Honjo</span> Japanese immunologist and Nobel laureate (born 1942)

Tasuku Honjo is a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). He is also known for his molecular identification of cytokines: IL-4 and IL-5, as well as the discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immune checkpoint</span> Regulators of the immune system

Immune checkpoints are regulators of the immune system. These pathways are crucial for self-tolerance, which prevents the immune system from attacking cells indiscriminately. However, some cancers can protect themselves from attack by stimulating immune checkpoint targets.

Checkpoint inhibitor therapy is a form of cancer immunotherapy. The therapy targets immune checkpoints, key regulators of the immune system that when stimulated can dampen the immune response to an immunologic stimulus. Some cancers can protect themselves from attack by stimulating immune checkpoint targets. Checkpoint therapy can block inhibitory checkpoints, restoring immune system function. The first anti-cancer drug targeting an immune checkpoint was ipilimumab, a CTLA4 blocker approved in the United States in 2011.

Arlene Helen Sharpe is an American immunologist and Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University and Chair of the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. In 2017, she received the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize with Gordon J. Freeman, Lieping Chen, James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their collective contributions to the pre-clinical foundation and development of immune checkpoint blockade, a novel form of cancer therapy that has transformed the landscape of cancer treatment. She served as the hundredth president of the American Association of Immunologists from 2016 to 2017 and served as an AAI Council member from 2013 to 2016. She is the co-director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Padmanee Sharma</span> American immunologist

Padmanee Sharma is an immunologist and oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. She holds the position of professor of genitourinary medical oncology and immunology in the Division of Cancer Medicine where she specializes in renal, prostate, and bladder cancers.

Philip Greenberg is a professor of medicine, oncology, and immunology at the University of Washington and head of program in immunology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His research is centered around T cell biology and therapeutic cell therapies. He is a co-founder of Juno Therapeutics.

<i>The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer</i> Book by Charles Graeber

The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer is a non-fiction book written by American journalist and author Charles Graeber. The book was written for the lay reader and includes sections on immunology written for a general audience. It was published by Twelve just before James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on cancer immunology.

Matthew F. Krummel(Max Krummel) is a Professor in the Pathology Department at University of California, San Francisco. He is known for Systems Immunology and studies mechanisms that regulate the immune system.

References

  1. 1 2 "James P. Allison – Facts – 2018". NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB. October 1, 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  2. 1 2 "First Tang Prize for Biopharmaceutical Science Awarded to James P. Allison, PhD, and Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD". www.tang-prize.org. The ASCO Post. July 10, 2014. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Foundation, Lasker. "Unleashing the immune system to combat cancer | The Lasker Foundation". The Lasker Foundation. Lasker Foundation. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  4. ↑ "James Allison wins 2018 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research" . Retrieved September 11, 2018.
  5. ↑ "James Allison". Cancer Research Institute. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  6. ↑ Blair, Jenny (May 2, 2014). "Raising the Tail". The Alcalde . Texas Exes . Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  7. ↑ "2014 Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science". Archived from the original on October 20, 2017. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
  8. ↑ Devlin, Hannah (October 1, 2018). "James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo win Nobel prize for medicine". the Guardian. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  9. ↑ "FamilySearch.org". FamilySearch . Retrieved December 5, 2023.
  10. 1 2 Cavallo, Jo (September 15, 2014). "Immunotherapy Research of James P. Allison, PhD, Has Led to a Paradigm Shift in the Treatment of Cancer - The ASCO Post". www.ascopost.com. ASCO Post. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  11. ↑ Lopez, Monica (October 1, 2018). "Alice native Dr. James Allison awarded 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine". Corpus Christi Caller Times.
  12. ↑ Barton, Jackson (October 2, 2018). "Alumni receives Nobel Prize for revolutionary cancer treatment". The Daily Texan. Archived from the original on October 4, 2018. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  13. ↑ Allison, James Patrick (1973). Studies on bacterial asparaginases: I. Isolation and characterization of a tumor inhibitory asparaginase from Alcaligenes Eutrophus. II. Insolubilization of L-Asparaginase by covalent attachment to nylon tubing (Ph.D.). The University of Texas at Austin. OCLC   43380316 – via ProQuest.
  14. 1 2 "James P. Allison, Ph.D. - Immunology - Faculty - MD Anderson Cancer Center". faculty.mdanderson.org. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  15. 1 2 3 "Meet the Carousing Texan Who Just Won a Nobel Prize". WIRED. Retrieved October 25, 2018.
  16. ↑ "James P. Allison PH.D." Candel Therapeutics. April 13, 2021. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
  17. ↑ "Advisory Board - Lytix Biopharma". www.lytixbiopharma.com. Retrieved December 5, 2023.
  18. ↑ Allison, JP; McIntyre, BW; Bloch, D (November 1982). "Tumor-specific antigen of murine T-lymphoma defined with monoclonal antibody". Journal of Immunology. 129 (5): 2293–300. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.129.5.2293 . PMID   6181166. S2CID   13249566.
  19. ↑ Leach, D. R.; Krummel, M. F.; Allison, J. P. (March 22, 1996). "Enhancement of Antitumor Immunity by CTLA-4 Blockade". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 271 (5256): 1734–1736. Bibcode:1996Sci...271.1734L. doi:10.1126/science.271.5256.1734. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   8596936. S2CID   7215817.
  20. ↑ "UC Berkeley Cancer Research Lab » The Story of Yervoy (Ipilimumab)". crl.berkeley.edu. Retrieved October 6, 2018.
  21. ↑ Dreifus, Claudia (February 3, 2020). "The Contrarian Who Cures Cancers". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
  22. ↑ "James P. Allison - Researcher Profile | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center". Memorial Sloan - Kettering Cancer Center. Archived from the original on January 6, 2013. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  23. ↑ Meho, Lokman I. (2020). "Highly prestigious international academic awards and their impact on university rankings". Quantitative Science Studies: 1–25. doi: 10.1162/qss_a_00045 . S2CID   218488355.
  24. ↑ "Past winners". brandeis.edu. Brandeis University. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  25. ↑ "Past Recipients". The American Association of Immunologists. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
  26. ↑ Ackerman, Todd (April 4, 2014). "The scientist who just might cure cancer". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  27. ↑ "Horwitz Prize Awarded for Work on Therapy That Uses the Immune System to Destroy Cancer Cells". Cumc.columbia.edu. October 2, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  28. ↑ "2014 Massry Prize recipients noted for work in immunotherapy". hscnews dated August 19, 2014. August 19, 2014. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
  29. ↑ Harvey Prize 2014 Archived July 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  30. ↑ "Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter prize for pioneer work in cancer immunotherapy". eurekalert date March 15, 2015. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
  31. ↑ "Wolf Prize to be awarded to eight laureates from US, UK and Switzerland". Jpost.com. January 3, 2017. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  32. ↑ "James Allison". warrenalpert.org. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
  33. ↑ "Fondazione Balzan". www.balzan.org. Archived from the original on September 11, 2017. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
  34. ↑ "King Faisal International Prize 2018". Kfip.org. April 1, 2018. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  35. ↑ "Trailblazing Researchers in Immunotherapy Selected to Receive America's Most Distinguished Prize in Medicine". Amc.edu. August 15, 2018. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  36. ↑ "Discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation" (PDF). The Nobel Assembly. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  37. ↑ Hannah, Devlin (October 2018). "James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo win Nobel prize for medicine". The Guardian. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  38. ↑ "All Nobel Prizes". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  39. ↑ "Documentary Film | Jim Allison". BREAKTHROUGH. Retrieved December 5, 2023.
  40. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  41. 1 2 Ackerman, Todd (December 30, 2015). "For pioneering immunotherapy researcher, the work is far from over". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
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