James Allison

James Allison shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Tasuku Honjo for the discovery that CTLA-4 functions as a brake on T cell activation, and for demonstrating that blocking CTLA-4 with antibodies could unleash anti-tumor T cell responses. His discovery led directly to ipilimumab — the first drug that improved survival in melanoma through an immune mechanism — and launched the modern checkpoint immunotherapy era that has transformed cancer treatment.