Carl H. June

Carl H. June, MD is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies. He is the world's foremost pioneer of CAR-T cell therapy and the individual most responsible for translating chimeric antigen receptor T cell technology from laboratory concept to approved cancer therapy. His landmark 2011 papers in Science Translational Medicine and NEJM reported the first dramatic clinical successes with CD19-directed CAR-T cells in patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia and pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, demonstrating complete remissions in previously incurable patients and establishing CAR-T as a transformative therapeutic modality. Dr. June and his team developed the 4-1BB co-stimulatory domain inclusion in the CAR construct, which dramatically improved CAR-T cell persistence and antitumor efficacy compared to earlier designs. The CD19 CAR-T cell product developed at Penn was subsequently licensed and developed by Novartis as tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), which received FDA approval in 2017 — the first gene therapy approved in the United States. Dr. June has continued to pioneer next-generation CAR-T approaches including solid tumor targeting (mesothelin, EGFR), multiplex CRISPR editing, armored CARs, and universal allogeneic CAR-T platforms. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and holds over 100 patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine.