Texas cancer researcher was called ‘foolish’, then won the Nobel Prize (2018)
As some context, in 2001, a couple of scientists many might consider to be the closest to the &quot;leaders of cancer research&quot; wrote a seminal review in the journal Cell called as &quot;hallmarks of cancer&quot; where they set out to define 7 essential (or what they thought was essential) things that a tumor has to do to be defined as cancerous.<p>That list did not include any mention whatsoever of the immune system. IIRC the only mention of the immune system was in one sentence deep in the review where they just casually disregard it.<p>I was still in high school when this review came out so I probably can&#x27;t say I would have thought differently but at least to me that review was indicative of the fairly myopic way research happens in general, even today. Imagine this - two of the leaders of the field who are supposed to fill out ten pages of all the things that could affect or be affected by a developing cancer, and it did not fathom to the that the immune system had something to do with it?<p>The more outrageous thing is its not unheard of that the immune system has a role to play. People had suspected a long time that even chemo therapy in general only works via the immune response. It&#x27;s the level of insulation between immunologists and cancer biologists that was to blame. People just decided to stick to one gene or disease and really didn&#x27;t want to give a shit about anything else happening in biology with serious thought. No wonder it has taken us so long!<p>And if you think Im being too harsh, a decade later in 2011 the same authors wrote an amended review to update their original. By now it had become obvious that the immune system presented both a formidable barrier at first and an essential ally in later steps for any cancer to be able to grow and thrive. Don&#x27;t know about you, but that sounds like an essential &quot;Hallmark&quot; of cancer to me. But then of course lest we correct ourselves, the researchers just grouped the immune checkpoint as one of the several other &quot;supplemental&quot; hallmarks that were discovered since.