Cancer immunotherapy innovator James Allison receives the 2015 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award

摘要

The 2015 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award honors James P. Allison, PhD, for pioneering a new approach to cancer immunotherapy (Figure 1). Allison has made many seminal contributions to immunology, including the identification of the receptor on T cells that recognizes and binds antigens; the discovery that T cells require a second molecular signal from the costimulatory molecule CD28 to launch a response to a bound antigen; elucidation of the function of cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4), which acts as a built-in off-switch on T cells; and the development of a CTLA-4blocking antibody, which unleashes T cells, allowing them to eliminate cancer cells. A therapeutic CTLA-4 antibody (ipilimumab, also known as Yervoy) is now used to treat advanced melanoma and is currently under investigation for the treatment of many other malignancies. Allisons work has caused a paradigm shift in the treatment of cancer in which treatment is focused on helping the patients immune system defeat the tumor instead of targeting the tumor itself.His achievements include elucidation of the structure of the T cell antigen receptor, elucidation of the function of CTLA-4, and the development of a CTLA-4blocking antibody, which led to the development of therapeutic CTLA-4 antibodies (ipilimumab) that are now used to treat advanced melanoma.