Peter Linsley, PhD, Director of Systems Immunology at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI), is a trailblazer in the field of immune response regulation. On December 10, 2018, the Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine was awarded to two immunology researchers, James Allison, PhD, and Tasuku Honjo, PhD, for their work related to immune checkpoint inhibitors which led to the development of cancer immunotherapy. BRI celebrates Dr. Linsley’s contributions to the understanding of the regulation of T cell activation. His identification of B7 (now CD80) as a co-stimulator of T cell activation and CTLA-4 as another T-cell activation signal, contributed significantly to the body of knowledge about immune system regulation that ultimately led Drs. Allison and Honjo to their discovery of new cancer therapy approaches related to immune regulation.
