Gene-therapy pioneer Carl June, MD, of the Perelman School of Medicine will receive the 2018 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. The honor is reserved for those “who have altered the course of medical research” and is one of the largest prizes in medicine and science in the United States. June and his team developed 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.

Albany Medical Center has given out the $500,000 award annually since 2001. June is one of three scientists who will receive this year’s award. The others are Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, chief of the Surgery Branch of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute, and James P. Allison, PhD, chair of Immunology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Former Department Chair Dr. Peter Nowell received the Albany Prize in 2013.

Carl June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Penn’s 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 (CLL) remain in remission nearly eight years later.
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Read the Albany Medical Center press release