THE DISCOVERY THAT T CELLS DESTROY CANCER CELLS
An immunologist Lloyd Old is credited as the first modern researcher whose research life was devoted to trying to “understand how the immune system could—at times-- reject tumors.” In the 1970s he created vaccines to antigens on tumors, but the "clinical outcomes they produced were insufficient" and his failures caused some to become "skeptical about the therapeutic potential of tumor immunology.” https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1217940 Decades later a Texan named Jim Allison was studying the relationship between T-lymphocytes and cancer, and he made a discovery that revolutionized our thinking. Allison's father was a country physician and his mother developed lymphoma and died when he was a boy. He initially planned to follow in his father’s footsteps but as a high school student he got interested in research. In a later interview, he claimed he was reluctant to become a physician because doctors have to be right almost all the time. Res...