NEX Verbal Ability Reading Comprehension Version 2 Questions

1. In October 2018, James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine for their groundbreaking efforts in inhibitingthe impact of cancer in patients through immunotherapy. James P. Allison, 70-year-old immunologist and native Texan, works at the prestigious Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Tasuku Honjo is a 76-year-old immunologist and native of Kyoto, Japan who currently leads a variety of important medical research efforts at Kyoto University. Their research efforts span several decades, in two extremely different national contexts, but their recent international collaborations have reignited the profession over the last ten years.
2. Together, their cutting-edge research has helped make cancer immunology one of the most innovative branches in the field of medicine. Their current project, which focuses on mitigating negative immune regulation, has helped uncover new strategies for "inhibiting the brakes of our immune systems" through T-cell immunotherapy. Though cancer rates continue to decline throughout developed countries, it still remains the second leading cause of global mortality rates, contributing to millions of deaths each year. Thanks to their findings, many research initiatives, which had previously given up on the prospects of immunotherapy practices, are reinvesting hundreds of millions of dollars into an entirely new class of drugs that might help bring about lasting remissions in global cancer rates. Allison and Honjo were consequently deemed perfect candidates for a Nobel Prize because their research has not only broken barriers in the medical field, but eliminated borders in the fight against cancer, catalyzing cross-continental efforts to conquer the negative effects of this costly disease.
3. Cancerous tumors serve as some of the greatest antagonists within our immune systems, thwarting our body's ability to destroy foreign invaders. These cancerous tumors are particularly skilled at incapacitating our body's capacity to ward off malignant cells that spawn inside of us. Cancer, for reasons previously unknown to researchers, quickly excites our body's "molecular brakes “, which, in turn, lowers the effectiveness of our immune systems. For several decades, radiation therapy and standard chemotherapy were believed to be the only effectual approaches to mitigating the spread of cancer in the body. These classic therapies, however, are extremely harmful to human tissue, and they are often shadowed by toxic side effects. Cancer immunotherapy is therefore seen as a positive alternative that can reduce the likelihood of these crippling side effects. Cancer immunotherapy, in short, has become the more humane option for targeting our body's cancerous invaders.
4. All of this, however, would not have been possible without the nearly-thirty-year research campaigns carried out, separately at first, by Allison and Honjo. In the 1990s, Allison began monitoring a protein known as CTLA-4. CTLA-4 is located in the membranes of active T-cells, a type of white blood cell, behaving like an off switch for these "soldiers" within our immune systems. Allison's initial work in the early 1990s focused on ways to interfere with this off-switch and encourage these soldiers to return to the body's war against cancer. Around the same time, Honjo had been targeting another off-switch known as PD-1. PD-1 is a biological protector that limits our T-cells to overexposure; it prevents our immune system's soldiers from entering too many battles against foreign invaders. PD-1 is the "general" of the wars in our immune system that ensures that our T-cells do not become too exhausted. Some cancers intentionally try to attack this general, shutting down its capacity to command T-cells.
5. By the 2000s, Allison and Honjo's paradigm-shifting efforts had converged to find ways to (re)motivate the T-cell troops of our bodies through a new brand of cancer immunotherapy that targets both the effects CTLA-4 and PD-1. The result has been Nobel award-winning effort to conquer cancer through more amenable physiological measures.
6. And the world should be thankful -Allison and Honjo's medical practices are now on the forefront of eliminating the negative effects of melanoma, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, bladder cancer, and liver cancer. While these are just a few sources of foreign invasion, easing their effects is one step in the right direction for the medical industry's larger war on cancer.