15 Facts About Michel Sadelain

Michel Sadelain is the Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy.

Michel Sadelain was previously the Steve and Barbara Friedman Chair, founding director of the Center for Cell Engineering, and the head of the Gene Transfer and Gene Expression Laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Michel Sadelain is best known for his major contributions to T cell engineering and chimeric antigen receptor therapy, an immunotherapy based on the genetic engineering of a patient's own T cells to treat cancer.

Michel Sadelain was born in 1960 in Paris, France, where he earned his MD at the University of Paris, France, in 1984.

In 1994, Michel Sadelain joined Memorial Sloan Kettering as an assistant member in the Sloan Kettering Institute, where he established programs on human hematopoietic stem cell and T cell engineering.

Michel Sadelain is a past president of the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy and previously served on its board of directors from 2004 to 2007.

Michel Sadelain served as a member of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the NIH from 2013 to 2015.

In 2024, Michel Sadelain was appointed Columbia University as the Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy.

Michel Sadelain serves as the Director of Columbia University Irving Medical Center's Cancer Cell Therapy Initiative in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Michel Sadelain is a recognized leader in the conceptualization and design of synthetic receptors for antigen, which he named chimeric antigen receptors.

Michel Sadelain's laboratory designed second generation CARs, which are endowed with both activating and costimulatory properties, which is integral to the success of CAR therapies.

In 2003, Michel Sadelain's lab identified CD19 as a target for CAR therapy in mice.

The history of the field and Michel Sadelain's contributions are narrated in the 2021 George Stamatoyannopoulos Memorial Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Michel Sadelain is a named inventor on US Patent No 7446190B2 covering nucleic acids encoding chimeric T cell receptors.

Michel Sadelain is named on patent US Patent No 10,370,452 covering compositions and uses of effector T cells expressing a chimeric antigen receptor, where such T cells are derived from a pluripotent stem cell including an induced pluripotent stem cell.