# Sharon Belvin

Source: https://onco.cc/people/sharon-belvin/  
OnCo record `sharon-belvin` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

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.

## Summary

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.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Tags: hero; patient
- Role: Early complete responder to ipilimumab whose recovery Jim Allison called the moment he knew
- Specialisms: Melanoma; Checkpoint immunotherapy; Clinical trial participation

## Sources

- James P. Allison (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Allison
- Memorial Sloan Kettering: https://www.mskcc.org/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Melanoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/melanoma/)
- fronts: [Immunotherapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/immunotherapy/)
- technologies: [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/)
- targets: [CTLA-4](https://onco.cc/targets/ctla4/)
- drugs: [Aldesleukin (high-dose IL-2)](https://onco.cc/drugs/aldesleukin/), [Ipilimumab](https://onco.cc/drugs/ipilimumab/)
- institutions: [Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/mskcc/)
- people: [James P. Allison](https://onco.cc/people/james-allison/)
- bottlenecks: [No one can predict who responds to immunotherapy](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-immunotherapy-response/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/sharon-belvin.json