Dr. Michel Sadelain
Dr. Michel Sadelain
Director, Center for Cell Engineering
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Michel Sadelain is the director of the Center for Cell Engineering, the Stephen and Barbara Friedman
Chair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and a member of the Molecular pharmacology and
Chemistry program and the Departments of Medicine and pediatrics. After earning his medical degree from
the University of paris, France, and his doctorate in Immunology from the University of Alberta, Canada, he
trained as a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before joining
MSKCC in 1994.
His research focuses on human cell engineering and cell therapy to treat cancer and hereditary blood
disorders. His laboratory has made several seminal contributions to the conceptualization, design and clinical
translation of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) for cancer immunotherapy. One essential contribution was
the first demonstration that tri-partite receptors that combine antigen recognition, initiation of human T cell
activation and costimulation, now known as second generation CARs, possess enhanced therapeutic potency–
an advance that is now verified in clinical studies. Together with collaborators Renier Brentjens and Isabelle
Riviere, the MSKCC investigators were the first to publish dramatic molecular remissions in patients with
chemorefractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) following treatment with CD19-targeted T cells. The
Sadelain laboratory has also developed artificial antigen presenting cells, auto- and trans-costimulatory
engineering strategies, combinatorial antigen approaches and inhibitory CARs designed to enhance potent and
selective tumor targeting. Dr Sadelain also works on hereditary blood disorders, focusing on ß-thalassemia and
sickle cell disease, as well as targeted gene delivery to genomic safe harbors.
In 2012, Dr. Sadelain was awarded the Cancer Research Institute's prestigious Coley Award for
Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology, for his work on CARs (shared with Carl june). CARs were
highlighted as part of the Science 2013 "breakthrough of the year". In 2013, he received the Sultan Bin
Khalifa International Award for Innovative Medical Research on Thalassemia for his pioneering research on
curative therapies for the hemoglobinopathies. Dr Sadelain currently serves on the nIH Recombinant DnA
Advisory Committee and is also the Vice-president of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy.