This week we began watching the documentary called Jim Allison: Breakthrough. This movie documents the life and achievements of the University of Texas’s own Dr. Jim Allison. This renowned researcher has dedicated his life to the study of the immune system and cancer. In 2018, Dr. Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of a novel, “cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation,” according to the Nobel Prize Organization. Specifically, he has pioneered a method to engineer T-cells (one cellular component of the human immune system) to recognize cancer cell antigens that it would not normally recognize and then kill these cells. This is a revolutionary therapy for cancer because it provides a level of specificity never before achieved. Current treatments, like chemotherapy drugs or radiation treatment, broadly attack all dividing cells. Although it targets cancer cells because they divide so quickly, both treatments have significant off-target effects that produce the hallmark cancer symptoms like hair loss, fatigue, and nausea.
So far, we have only watched about 30 minutes of the documentary recapping the beginning of his life and research career, but throughout the next few weeks of the program, we will slowly watch more and more. It was interesting to see exactly how his cancer afflicted family, dealings with a grade school teacher pushing to weed out the theory of evolution in favor of creation theory, and an early bacterial discovery leading to his continued research into the role of the immune system in oncology shaped his career and path through life.
Jim Allison’s discovery is very applicable to us biomedical engineers because it provides hope to patients and creates a new field of study. This week, my partner Sahil and I are beginning to model the response of gliomas, a brain cancer with ~ 2-year life expectancy after diagnosis, to radiation therapy. As I mentioned earlier, radiation therapy creates other problems in the pursuit of killing the cancer cells within. It is inspiring to know that Jim Allison’s immunotherapy may provide a way to both stretch this life expectancy and serve as a potential cure for these patients that have not seen a medical breakthrough in many years. However, it is the duty of us emerging biomedical engineers to apply this therapy to various cancers and develop cost-cutting methods of cellular and antibody engineering to increase the breadth and accessibility of this promising therapy. I am excited to finish watching this documentary, both for the content and because the program sent us popcorn to eat while we watch 🙂
Zach Cacini | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
