Michel Sadelain Awarded Prizes for Cell Therapy Breakthroughs
Michel Sadelain, the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine, has been awarded the 2025 Richard N. Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology for developing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, a groundbreaking form of personalized cancer immunotherapy that turns T cells into tumor killers.
In CAR T-cell therapy for cancer, a patient’s own immune cells are removed from their body, reprogrammed to attack tumor cells, and infused back in. The therapy has led to durable remissions in tens of thousands of patients with previously incurable blood cancers.
Three other CAR T pioneers—Carl June and Bruce Levine from the University of Pennsylvania and Isabelle Rivière, formerly of Memorial Sloan Kettering and now with Takeda—shared the award.
In 2024, Sadelain joined Columbia from Memorial Sloan Kettering as the inaugural director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET), a new University-wide program to expand research into cell and gene therapies. He also serves as the director of the Cancer Cell Therapy Initiative in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.
CAR T-cell technology has reshaped how physicians treat leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma, and is now showing promise in treating autoimmune and infectious diseases.
“The idea of genetically instructing T cells to specifically eliminate cancer cells was born in the 1980s, but it would take 20 years to bring it to patients,” Sadelain said in statement from the Broad Institute, which administers the annual prize.
The Merkin Prize recognizes novel technologies that have improved human health; the first Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology was awarded in 2023.
Sadelain also received the 2025 King Faisal Prize in Medicine in a ceremony in Saudia Arabia in April. The prize honored his pioneering work in the field of cellular therapy and in particular for the genetic engineering of immune cells with CARs. His team was the first to report dramatic responses to CD19 CAR therapy in adults with relapsed and refractory acute lymphocytic leukemia leading to long-term survival.
Sadelain is a previous recipient of the 2024 Canada Gairdner Award and the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.