Michel Sadelain, director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET), has been awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Biology and Biomedicine. The award recognizes his contributions to developing CAR-T cell therapy, a treatment that modifies a patient’s T cells to target and destroy cancer cells.
Sadelain shares the prize with Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania. Both researchers are credited with pioneering methods to isolate T cells from patients’ immune systems and equip them with synthetic receptors, enabling these cells to identify and eliminate cancer when reintroduced into the body.
The concept for chimeric antibody receptor T-cell therapies emerged in the early 1990s. Laboratory and preclinical studies by Sadelain and June focused on targeting CD19, a protein found in leukemias and lymphomas. Their work led to significant advances in treating blood cancers.
In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first CAR-T therapy for patients with B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia who had not responded to chemotherapy. Since then, seven CAR-T therapies have received FDA approval, treating over 50,000 patients with various blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma. Many of these patients have achieved remission following treatment.
“It is now widely accepted that engineered immunity exemplified by CAR-T cells can succeed where no other treatment, chemotherapy, or bone marrow transplantation has before,” said Sadelain.
Researchers at CICET are now working on expanding CAR-T cell therapy applications beyond blood cancers. They aim to develop treatments for solid tumors, infectious diseases, and autoimmune disorders.
“I believe there’s every reason to be optimistic that in the next few years, certainly the next decade, we will have effective CAR-T cell therapies for brain tumors and other solid cancers,” Sadelain said. “And recently, we have seen remarkable responses to CAR-T therapies in patients with autoimmune diseases such as lupus.”
Sadelain holds the Herbert and Florence Irving Professorship of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also leads a university-wide program focused on advancing research into cell and gene therapies as well as directing Columbia University’s Cancer Cell Therapy Initiative within its Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Sadelain’s previous honors include several prestigious awards in recognition of his scientific achievements. In 2025, he was elected to an unspecified honorific organization.
