The BBVA Foundation award goes to James Allison, creator of the first immunotherapy to prove highly effective against cancer
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category goes, in this tenth edition, to American immunologist James P. Allison, whose research, says the jury, “had led to harnessing the immune system to combat cancer in patients and the development of new therapies.” Allison was the first to demonstrate that immunotherapy can treat cancer effectively, initiating an approach that “has provided clinical benefit to many cancer patients” and “stimulated the development of a new class of drugs employing the immune system to fight cancer.”
30 January, 2018
In 2011, Allison’s efforts led to the approval by the U.S. medicines agency (the FDA) of the first anti-cancer drug that works by activating the immune system, for the metastatic melanoma indication. The treatment would exceed all expectations, with around 20% of patients still living ten years later. The drug in question – ipilimumab – has produced a “complete paradigm shift” in the way medicine approaches cancer therapy, explains jury member Lélia Delamarre, Group Leader in the Cancer Immunology Department at biotech company Genentech.
Several drugs based on Allison’s principle have since been approved, seeking to boost the percentage of melanoma patients who can benefit from immunotherapy. Effectiveness has also been found for this line of treatment in lung, kidney, bladder and head and neck cancers.
Photo © University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center
