Beakthrough (The Movie)

There's a new movie out called "Breakthrough." It's a documentary about Dr. James Allison, a cancer research whose work on immunotherapy won him a Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Last week, he did an interview with Mary Elizabeth Williams, a writer who was diagnosed with terminal melanoma until she received the treatment that was developed through the work that won Dr, Allison his Nobel Prize, a combination of Ipilimumab (an antibody, like Rituxan, but this one works on something called Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–Associated Antigen 4, or CTLA-4] and Nivolumab (another antibody that works against Programmed Death 1, or PD-1, receptors).

Without getting into too much detail, the combo works, like all immunotherpay, but making the immune system seek out cancer cells, when it would normally ignore them.

The "Breakthrough" movie is only playing in a few theaters right now. On the website for the film, you can see a trailer, and see the locations for where it's playing in the next few weeks.


From what I can tell, in telling the story of Dr. Allison, it does a few important things. First, it humanizes Dr. Allison, and shows how personally important it is to him that he was able to help so many people. Second, it shows how much work goes into developing cancer treatments. It takes years for something successful to get to patients, with a lot of failures along the way. And finally, from what I've read, the film also recognizes the people who have helped Dr. Allison along the way. There's no way that one genius can do it all alone. There are so many people, from other scientists, down to lab assistants, who play a role, that they should get some recognition, too.

Mostly, though, it looks interesting to me because it gives me hope. There are lots of Dr. Allisons out there. Some are building on the great work he has done. Some are trying new and wonderful things on their own.

And while it may take some time for their discoveries to get to us, it should give us hope that there are teams of people out there who are working hard to make it happen.