New Cancer Treatments Just Won Two Scientists a Nobel Prize. Here ’s How They Work

It wasn't the Nobel Committee that reached James Allison first on Monday to inform him that he had won the coveted annual prize in Physiology or Medicine. It was his son who broke the news with a 5:30 am phone call. Minutes later, a Swedish reporter reached him before the committee could. "I was like, 'Oh my God, it happened,'" Allison says to TIME. "I'm just in shock, I guess." Allison, chair of immunology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was awarded the Nobel for his discovery in 1994 in mice that led to an entirely new class of anti-cancer drugs called checkpoint inhibitors. They're designed to unleash the power of the immune system and have saved tens of thousands of lives—including that of President Jimmy...

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