$400,000 Prize Honors Pioneers of CAR T-Cell Therapy

The 2025 Richard N. Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology has been awarded to Carl June, Bruce Levine, Isabelle Rivière, and Michel Sadelain for their foundational contributions to the development of CAR T-cell therapy. The recipients were jointly honored for their complementary roles in advancing CAR T-cell therapy and will share the $400,000 prize.

“The development of CAR T-cell technology is a defining moment in the history of biomedicine – one of the all-time amazing transformative breakthroughs, demonstrating how bold ideas in basic science can evolve into lifesaving therapies," said Richard Merkin, Founder and CEO of Heritage Provider Network

Carl June and Bruce Levine, both based at the University of Pennsylvania, were instrumental in developing protocols for modifying T cells ex vivo to express synthetic receptors that target specific antigens on malignant cells. Their collaborative efforts led to one of the first successful applications of CAR T-cell therapy in human patients, with a landmark study in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia demonstrating durable responses. June's research focused on immunological mechanisms and clinical translation, while Levine oversaw the development of scalable cell processing methods that are now foundational to commercial manufacturing.

Michel Sadelain and Isabelle Rivière, working at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, contributed significantly to the optimization of CAR constructs and to the development of robust platforms for gene transfer and T-cell expansion. Sadelain’s early work on incorporating co-stimulatory domains into CARs improved the persistence and efficacy of engineered T cells, while Rivière led efforts to establish protocols ensuring reproducibility and regulatory compliance, enabling the broader adoption of the technology in multicenter trials and therapeutic development.

“By combining the powers of natural cell biology with genetic engineering and cell manufacturing, we were able to unlock the therapeutic potency of T cells in patients with refractory leukemias,” said Rivière, who is now vice president of Cell Therapy Sciences at Takeda. “We treated our first patient with CD19 CAR T cells back in 2007. We could not detect leukemic cells in the patient's bone marrow just three weeks after administering the CAR T cells. We ran the assay three times to convince ourselves that the tumor cells were indeed gone. That was the 'eureka' moment – a moment of total marvel when we contemplated such an outcome.”

“This is one of the most transformative therapeutic breakthroughs in modern medicine," said Harold Varmus, Nobel laureate and chair of the Merkin Prize selection committee. “The work of June, Levine, Rivière, and Sadelain laid the foundation for a whole new class of treatments. Their contributions have saved lives and opened doors for future innovations that will continue to transform human health.”

“There are many scientists who contributed to the basic groundwork for this technology, but it was really these four people who moved CAR T cells into a new age of robustness and rapid clinical translation,” added Geneviève Almouzni, honorary director of the Curie Institute Research Center and another member of Prize selection committee.

The Merkin Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have developed transformative technologies that have improved human health and is administered by the Broad Institute.