James P. Allison

James P. Allison, PhD is Executive Director of the Immunotherapy Platform and Professor and Chair of the Department of Immunology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is the co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Tasuku Honjo, for his discovery that CTLA-4 functions as an inhibitory checkpoint on T cells and that blocking CTLA-4 unleashes potent antitumor immune responses. Working at the University of California Berkeley in the mid-1990s, Dr. Allison demonstrated in mouse tumor models that anti-CTLA-4 antibody treatment could eradicate established tumors — a landmark conceptual breakthrough showing for the first time that modulating immune checkpoints, rather than targeting the tumor directly, could be a viable therapeutic strategy. This work led directly to the clinical development of ipilimumab (Yervoy), which became the first checkpoint inhibitor approved by the FDA in 2011 for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and was the first agent to demonstrate improved overall survival in that setting. Dr. Allison's laboratory has continued to define the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which CTLA-4 suppresses T cell responses, the distinct roles of CTLA-4 on effector T cells versus regulatory T cells in the tumor microenvironment, and rational combination strategies pairing CTLA-4 blockade with PD-1 blockade and other modalities. He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and holds numerous patents related to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. Beyond the Nobel Prize, he has received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Tang Prize, and honorary doctorates from leading universities worldwide.