Michel Sadelain
Columbia University

MICHEL SADELAIN is the Herbert and Florence Irving professor of medicine, director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy, and director of the Cell Therapy Program in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a pioneer of CAR T-cell therapy. He led the development of CAR T-cells targeting CD19—unique markers found on the surface of blood cancer cells—and established genetic engineering and cell manufacturing capabilities to translate this research. In 2007, this groundwork enabled Sadelain and his team to start treating patients with refractory leukemias. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first CAR T-cell therapies—the first genetically engineered cell therapy of any kind—for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia and certain lymphomas. Sadelain completed his M.D. at the University of Paris, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. 

Sadelain has been elected to the American Association for Cancer Research, American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine of France. Sadelain has won the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Canada Gairdner International Award, Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy Outstanding Achievement Award, Léopold Griffuel Award, International Prize from Inserm, Jacob and Louise Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine, Passano Laureate, Pasteur-Weizmann/Servier International Prize, William B. Coley Award, and more.

Photo courtesy of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center & Columbia University Irving Medical Center