The Nobel Prize: “Without him my kids wouldn’t be here” – cancer survivor Sharon Belvin

The Nobel Prize shared a post on LinkedIn:

” ‘Without him [Nobel Prize laureate James Allison], without my oncologist, my kids wouldn’t be here. My husband wouldn’t have a wife.’ – cancer survivor Sharon Belvin.

She was one of the first patients to benefit from an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug invented by Allison, which is one form of immunotherapy widely available today.

At the age of 22, she was looking forward to getting married but was instead diagnosed with a type of skin cancer called metastatic melanoma that had spread to her lungs, lymph nodes and brain.

Belvin was offered the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial for immunotherapy and received a checkpoint inhibitor called ipilimumab, which was the first treatment of any type with the ability to offer the hope of survival for patients with metastatic melanoma.

‘It worked textbook,’ she said. Belvin’s tumours grew smaller until there was no evidence of cancer after one round of treatment.

Belvin and several other cancer survivors who have benefitted from immune checkpoint therapy were in Stockholm, Sweden in December 2018 to help Allison and his co-laureate Tasuku Honjo celebrate receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Read more of Belvin’s remarkable story and how immune checkpoint therapy was born.”

Source: The Nobel Prize/LinkedIn