Carl June, a gene therapy pioneer at the Abramson Cancer Center, will receive the 2018 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. June is receiving the award for his pioneering work in developing CAR T therapy, which became the nation’s first FDA-approved personalized cellular therapy for cancer in August 2017 and was approved for additional indications earlier this year. The prize will be awarded during a celebration on Wednesday, Sept. 26, in Albany, New York.
Albany Medical Center has given out the $500,000 award annually since 2001 to those “who have altered the course of medical research” and is one of the largest prizes in medicine and science in the United States, according to the organization. June is one of three scientists who will receive this year’s award.
June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, the director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapy in the Abramson Cancer Center, and the director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn. Clinical trials of CAR T therapy began at Penn in 2010, and two of the first three patients to receive the therapy, for chronic lymphocytic leukemia remain in remission nearly eight years later.
Read more at Penn Medicine News.
