Sharon Belvin
Diagnosed with metastatic melanoma at 22, she received the anti-CTLA-4 antibody ipilimumab in an early trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering and has been cancer-free since. Her meeting with James Allison in 2006 is part of immunotherapy's history.
Sharon Belvin was diagnosed with stage IV melanoma in 2004, at 22, shortly before her wedding, and the disease progressed through chemotherapy and interleukin-2. In 2005 she was enrolled by Jedd Wolchok at Memorial Sloan Kettering in a trial of ipilimumab, the anti-CTLA-4 antibody based on James Allison's work; within months her tumours had gone and they have not returned. In 2006 Wolchok introduced her to Allison, a meeting Allison has described as the point at which he understood that his laboratory work had become a treatment. Ipilimumab was approved by the FDA in March 2011, the first drug to extend survival in metastatic melanoma in a randomised trial, and the first of the checkpoint inhibitors. She appears in the 2019 documentary Jim Allison: Breakthrough and speaks for the early trial participants who took an unproven approach when nothing else worked.