'Some beautiful things are happening': behind Jim Allison's quest to cure cancer

A new documentary profiles the Nobel-winning, harmonica-slinging scientist behind one of the biggest modern breakthroughs in cancer treatment

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.