Meet the Carousing, Harmonica-Playing Texan Who Won a Nobel for his Cancer Breakthrough

Jim Allison is an iconoclastic scientist who toiled in obscurity for years. Then he helped crack a mystery that may save millions of lives: Why doesn’t the immune system attack cancer?

 Study Tests Immunotherapy in People with Cancer and Autoimmune Diseases

Researchers have launched a clinical trial to test an immunotherapy drug in patients who have both cancer and an autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or multiple sclerosis.

Immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases

Boosting or suppressing the immune system to treat disease is a delicate matter, as it can lead to adverse effects, such as fungal infections and lymphomas (in patients treated with TNF inhibitors) as well as the acute triggering of autoimmunity or cytokine-release syndrome (in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors or CAR-T cells).

Cell Wars: The Science of Immunotherapy

Harnessing the immune system to fight cancer.

Could Immunotherapy Lead the Way to Fighting Cancer?

A new treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer is offering hope to patients with advanced disease.

Could Immunotherapy Treat Diseases Besides Cancer?

Approaches for boosting the body’s immune system are being tried for autoimmune and heart conditions, but it is too early to know how well they will work in people.

Four challenges we have to crack before immune therapy can revolutionize how we fight cancer

In the future, immunotherapy could mean a personalized treatment, entirely tailored to an individual. As exciting as that sounds, we still have plenty of work to do, as there remains a lot we don’t know about the immune system. Here are some of the challenges we need to overcome to create these personalized treatments.

How Can We Unleash the Immune System?

Although immunotherapy can work wonders for cancer, it does not help everyone, side effects can be fierce, and costs are high. But the field is young.

How we are developing immunotherapies relevant to Africa

Preliminary research from around the world indicates that immunotherapies for cancer are less toxic than conventional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation. They also have the potential for fewer and less severe side effects. This means that immunotherapies could improve patients’ quality of life. Immunotherapies are effective, safe and relatively easy to manufacture. But they aren’t a standalone wonder drug that can bring about the end of cancer. A multi-pronged approach that involves a combination of the best treatment options has been heralded as the next wave of therapeutic strategies for cancer and may provide a curative treatment.

Personalized vaccines could help the immune system fight cancer

But there’s still a long way to go.

Scientists explore a new kind of immunotherapy to treat autoimmune diseases

Riding the coattails of CAR-T cancer therapies, scientists have begun to explore a spin-off: using similar immune cells to treat autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and prevent rejection of transplanted organs.

Suppressing the immune system won’t improve your chances of conceiving with IVF

Demand by people with fertility problems for corticosteroids, and other immune suppressants sometimes offered at IVF clinics, is driven in large part by medical and consumer misunderstanding of how the immune response works.

The Most Promising Cancer Treatments In a Century Have Arrived—But Not For Everyone

Scientists can train the immune system to attack cancer. But the prices—and the body's reaction—can go overboard.