Dr. Michel Sadelain, the “inventor of T cells” and a graduate of the University of Alberta, has won the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in life sciences. After completing his medical degree at the University of Paris, Dr. Sadelain earned his PhD in immunology at the University of Alberta, before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his postdoctoral fellowship focused on genetic engineering. He is now at the Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Dr. Sadelain and Dr. Carl June, University of Pennsylvania, will be given the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Award, described as the “Oscars of Science” at Breakthrough’s Gala Award Ceremony on April 13 in Los Angeles. They are receiving the award for their roles in genetically engineering T cells, which target and eliminate cancer cells, using chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that enable T cells to identify cancer cells and target them directly. You can read about Dr. June’s career in this blog about Emily Whitehead, the first pediatric patient in the world to receive CAR T-cell therapy for relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Drs. Sadelain and June are in one of three groups receiving the life sciences prize this year.
Sabine Hadida, Paul Negulescu and Fredrick Van Goor, with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, are being recognized for discovering drug combinations for cystic fibrosis. While Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a Canadian (Toronto) office, the connection to Canada goes much deeper. In 1989, scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto made the ground-breaking discovery of the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis: cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). Learn more about the recognition that Dr. Lap-Chee Tsui’s team received and more progress over the years in combatting this disease. CCRM has played a role in supporting the cystic fibrosis (CF) researchers at SickKids by generating a bank of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from 100 CF patients and correcting the point mutations in the CFTR gene in a subset of those lines. Read the case study.
The third prize is being shared amongst three individuals who identified risk genes for Parkinson’s disease. They are Ellen Sidransky, a geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute, Thomas Gasser, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen, and Andrew Singleton, a neurogeneticist at the National Institute on Aging. Although this Canadian connection is more of a stretch, all three researchers have received funding from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Michael J. Fox is Canadian.
The Breakthrough Prize was founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.
Watch this interview with Dr. Sadelain where he describes his work.
Stacey Johnson
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