Dr. Michel Sadelain is a globally recognized pioneer in cellular immunotherapy and a leading authority in the development of genetically engineered cell therapies. He currently serves as the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, where he directs both the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET) and the Cancer Cell Therapy Initiative in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Previously, he held the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for three decades, founding the Center for Cell Engineering there in 2007. Born in Paris, France in 1960, Dr. Sadelain received his medical degree from the University of Paris in 1984 and earned his PhD in Immunology from the University of Alberta, followed by postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT with Dr. Richard Mulligan from 1989 to 1994.
Dr. Sadelain is widely regarded as one of the founding architects of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, a revolutionary approach that reprograms a patient's immune cells to target cancer. His laboratory conceived the chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and identified CD19 as the optimal therapeutic target for B-cell malignancies, providing the first experimental evidence in 2003 that engineered human T cells could effectively target CD19-positive lymphomas and leukemias in preclinical models. His team achieved the first FDA approval for a CD19 CAR therapy trial in the United States and, in 2013, reported dramatic responses to CD19 CAR therapy in adults with relapsed and refractory acute lymphocytic leukemia, leading to long-term survival. These seminal contributions culminated in the FDA approval of CD19-targeting CAR therapies in 2017, which have since transformed the treatment landscape for previously intractable blood cancers and established a platform with broad therapeutic potential.
Dr. Sadelain's transformative work has earned him numerous prestigious accolades including the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Canada Gairdner International Award, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, and the King Faisal Prize. He co-founded Juno Therapeutics and has served as President of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, significantly shaping the field's research agenda and clinical translation. Beyond oncology, his current research focuses on enhancing antigen sensitivity, implementing logic gating, and extending the persistence of CAR T cells to overcome current limitations in solid tumor treatment. As he builds Columbia's cell engineering initiatives, Dr. Sadelain continues to pioneer the expansion of engineered cell therapies to address autoimmune diseases, transplant rejection, and other medical challenges, positioning his work at the forefront of the next generation of precise, potentially curative cellular medicines.
