Former Scripps Research postdoc wins Nobel Prize in medicine

James Allison, whose early work at Scripps Research in La Jolla set him on a path to finding highly successful ways to use the immune system to battle cancer, reached the pinnacle of science Monday when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

The Karolinska Institute in Sweden chose Allison, 70, to share the Nobel with Japan’s Tasuku Honjo, 76, for exploiting the immune system’s astonishing ability to wage war against cancer cells.

Allison — a prostate cancer survivor — also did work that helped lead to the development of Yervoy, an important drug that’s used to treat melanoma, especially when it has spread and can’t be stopped by surgery.

His career began to take off in the mid-1970s when he spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research, when the center was known as the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.

Early on, he was stuck doing work as a biochemist instead of pursuing his interest in immunology. But Allison — who is widely known as a tenacious, charismatic researcher — managed to switch fields and took on an experiment that helped spur his rise in science.

The experiment revealed interesting insights about how tumors are recognized by the immune system and was published in the journal Nature, bringing Allison lots of attention — and job offers.

He took a position at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston where he is a professor and chair of immunology.

Earlier in his career, at UC Berkeley and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he challenged orthodoxy about fighting cancer.

Allison “focused on finding ways to get the immune system to fight cancer rather than concentrating on individual tumors,” said Wendy Havran, a Scripps Research immunologist who worked in his lab at Berkeley.

“He took a lot of grief from immunologists over his approach,” she said. “His early work in La Jolla was probably the start of his interest in tumor immunology.”

Allison, whose mother died of lymphoma, primarily focused on a protein that operates somewhat like a brake in a motor vehicle.

He “realized the potential of releasing the brake and thereby unleashing our immune cells to attack tumors,” the Karolinska Institute said Monday. “He then developed this concept into a brand new approach for treating patients.

“In parallel, Tasuku Honjo discovered a protein on immune cells and, after careful exploration of its function, eventually revealed that it also operates as a brake, but with a different mechanism of action.

“Therapies based on his discovery proved to be strikingly effective in the fight against cancer.”

Monday’s announcement stirred joy at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla.

“Almost no one believed Jim when he proposed that boosting the immune response by antagonizing a surface protein in T cells known to act as a brake would be a successful cancer therapy,” said Tony Hunter, a prominent cancer researcher.

“With his long hair and somewhat disheveled appearance, Jim might not look like a successful scientist, but he gets credit for persevering in the wilderness.”

Allison said in a statement early Monday, “I’m honored and humbled to receive this prestigious recognition. A driving motivation for scientists is simply to push the frontiers of knowledge.

“I didn’t set out to study cancer, but to understand the biology of T cells, these incredible cells that travel our bodies and work to protect us.”

He succeeded by challenging orthodoxy.

“While most researchers investigating cancer immunology were advocating vaccines to turn ‘on’ T cells to drive anti-tumor immune responses, Dr. Allison was proposing the opposite—to block the ‘off’ signal,” according to the ASCO Post, a newspaper that covers cancer research.

Monday’s announcement represents only the latest instance in which a current or former Scripps Research scientist has been awarded the Nobel Prize. The recipients include K. Barry Sharpless, who won the Nobel in chemistry in 2001 for his work on “chirally catalysed oxidation reaction” and Bruce Beutler, who won the prize in physiology or medicine in 2011 for his work in immunology.

UC San Diego also has fared well; this year is the 10th anniversary of Roger Tsien winning the Nobel in chemistry for developing better ways to explore in the inside of cells and other organisms.

Allison and Honjo will share the $1 million prize, which will be bestowed in Stockholm in December.