Behind the Revolution in Cancer Therapy
Immunologist James Allison has spent over thirty years studying T cells and developing strategies for cancer immunotherapy. Now, he’s looking at new ways to unleash the immune system to eradicate cancer.

This video was produced for Johnson & Johnson Innovation by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine's board of editors.

When James Allison started researching T cells in the 1980s, he didn’t intend to cure cancer. He was just interested in the immune system. More than thirty years later, his work forms the basis for many of the most promising cancer therapeutics available today. Allison is now the chief immunologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the winner of the 2018 Dr. Paul Janssen Award but he still remembers his roots in research. And he’s reaching back to them to drive his immunology revolution forward once again.