303 | James P. Allison on Fighting Cancer with the Immune System

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A typical human lifespan is approximately three billion heartbeats in duration. Lasting that long requires not only intrinsic stability, but an impressive capacity for self-repair. Nevertheless, things do occasionally break down, and cancer is one of the most dramatic examples of such breakdown. Given that the body is generally so good at protecting itself, can we harness our internal security patrol - the immune system - to fight cancer? This is the hope of Nobel Laureate James Allison, who works on studying the structure and behavior of immune cells, and ways to coax them into fighting cancer. This approach offers hope of a way to combat cancer effectively, lastingly, and in a relatively gentle way.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/27/303-james-p-allison-on-fighting-cancer-with-the-immune-system/

James P. Allison received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently Regental Professor and Chair of the Department of Immunology, the Olga Keith Wiess Distinguished University Chair for Cancer Research, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Research, and Director of the James P. Allison Institute at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is the subject of the documentary film Jim Allison: Breakthrough. Among his numerous awards are the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	With the new Lloyd's app, you can do it all.
0:02.8	You can freeze your card if you misplace it.
0:05.4	Whilst you search behind the sofa.
0:07.4	Blame the dog.
0:08.2	Run upstairs. Run downstairs.
0:10.0	Empty your bag.
0:10.8	Look behind the sofa again.
0:12.4	Only to realise it's in your back pocket.
0:14.3	Curse quietly under your breath and unfreeze your card.
0:16.8	Shove everything back in your bag.
0:18.0	Take a deep breath.
0:19.6	Smile and run for the boss.
0:22.2	Freeze and unfreeze your card at the touch of a button.
0:25.3	The power to do it all on the new Lloyd's app.
0:28.0	Download now.
0:29.0	Please and seize it play.
0:30.1	Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape podcast.
0:32.4	I'm your host, Sean Carroll.
0:34.3	Cancer is one of the most terrible things we have to deal with in human life. It's a potentially
0:41.1	fatal disease, of course. You know, we're all going to die someday. That's something that maybe we can
0:46.2	make our peace with. But unlike many other diseases, cancer seems arbitrary in ways that are hard to
0:54.0	pin down. It can happen to anyone. It can happen at any
	...

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