A new documentary profiles the Nobel-winning, harmonica-slinging scientist behind one of the biggest modern breakthroughs in cancer treatment
![Some beautiful things are happening: behind Jim Allisons quest to cure cancer](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e2bb16369ecd81f276285c9dbbd675904b0b7e30/49_0_1800_1080/master/1800.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=0fb9a396b60166acb34fef269be68213)
Jim Allison doesn’t quite fit the archetype of the studious, buttoned-up scientist: with a full beard and long hair, the most gravelly of
Texas drawls and a history of ripping a harmonica on stage with Willie Nelson, Allison seems more like a longstanding Grateful Dead fan than game-changer in the quest to cure cancer.
The music-loving, 71-year-old scientist, long a renegade in the field of cancer research, is perhaps an unlikely prism through which to view the world of cutting-edge medicine. But the internationally renowned researcher has fundamentally shifted the trajectory of cancer treatment – an achievement covered in the new documentary Jim Allison: Breakthrough, by film-maker Bill Haney, which traces the arc of Allison’s iconoclastic career from a childhood marred by loss from cancer in rural Texas to a Nobel Prize in Medicine, along with Tasuku Honjo of
Japan in 2018.