Jim Allison: Breakthrough

This documentary tells the remarkable story of the perseverance of a biological scientist who found a cure for cancer through his trailblazing immunotherapy research. Jim Allison spent a significant part of his career as a professor of immunology and director of the Cancer Research Laboratory at UC Berkeley between 1985 and 2004, and concurrently at UC San Francisco from 1997. Among his many honors is the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shares with Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. This insightful portrait of the warmhearted Allison shows him as a harmonica-playing independent spirit from Alice, Texas, whose creative thinking and tenacity have helped define his life’s work.