{"id":263006,"date":"2025-09-29T05:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/263006\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T05:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:14:11","slug":"penn-professor-carl-june-discusses-medical-innovation-award-car-t-cell-research-in-dp-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/263006\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn professor Carl June discusses medical innovation award, CAR-T cell research in DP interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\t\t\t\t\t\tPenn Medicine professor Carl June won the Broermann Medical Innovation Award for his work on CAR-T cells (Photo from Penn Today).<\/p>\n

Perelman School of Medicine professor Carl June was recently awarded the Broermann Medical Innovation Award 2025 for his work on utilizing CAR-T cells in cancer therapy.\n<\/p>\n

The award<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 named after German businessman Bernard Broermann \u2014 recognizes \u201coutstanding scientific achievements in the field of medical innovation\u201d <\/a>and comes with \u20ac1 million in prize money. June\u2019s work has involved pioneering CAR-T cell therapy and co-founding BlueWhale Bio, a startup whose technology was used in a clinical trial<\/a> for cancer immunotherapy.\u00a0\n\t\t<\/p>\n

Modifying T-cells with chimeric antigen receptors allow them to bind to a \u201ccertain protein on the patient\u2019s cancer cells\u201d and help treat certain blood cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\u201c[June\u2019s] leadership \u2026 continues to shape how we build better, faster T-cell manufacturing,\u201d BlueWhale Bio Chief Executive Officer Peter Keller wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

In an interview with the DP, June recalled that as a young man he was initially interested in being a chemist like his father. After being drafted to serve in the Navy during the Vietnam War, June said he became more \u201cinterested in biology\u201d and medicine.\n<\/p>\n

June explained that bone marrow transplants for leukemia were coming to the forefront of medical research during his time in medical school. Bone marrow contains stem cells and T-cells, according to the American Cancer Society.<\/a>\u00a0\n\t<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the [Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center] as a postdoc to learn [about these transplants],\u201d June said. \u201c[These] could cure some patients of leukemia but had one very severe toxicity, which was [that] the T-cells from the donor could sometimes cure the leukemia, but it could also kill the patient.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

June said that his studies showed him \u201chow powerful\u201d T-cells are. After joining Penn Medicine in 1999, he worked with Perelman School of Medicine professor Bruce Levine to research T-cells.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no universal donor [for T-cells],\u201d June said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we had to work out how to grow the patient\u2019s own T-cells.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

BlueWhale Bio co-founder and Penn professor James Riley found that if researchers take the nucleus out of leukemia cells, what\u2019s left is a way to grow T-cells. June said that the company aims to find a \u201cspecial way to grow those cells.\u201d\u00a0\n\t\t<\/p>\n

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Get our newsletter, DP Daybreak, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen babies are born, you have an umbilical cord, it’s cut, and there\u2019s blood in [the cord],\u201d June said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really good source of T-cells.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

June added that he and Riley are working closely on this project. In a statement to the DP, Riley praised June\u2019s team as the \u201cbest in academic medicine, in which fundamental knowledge is uncovered,\u201d adding that June himself is a \u201ctrue pioneer and should be lauded for his sizable accomplishments.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

June is receiving the Broermann Award alongside Columbia Professor Michel Sadelain, who helped develop CAR-T cells used for targeting blood cancer cell markers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation<\/a> to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn Medicine professor Carl June won the Broermann Medical Innovation Award for his work on CAR-T cells (Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":263007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[23234,5229,8432,7823,24255,210,50,1448,70625,41929,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-263006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-academic-research","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-beats","11":"tag-covid","12":"tag-front","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-pa","16":"tag-penn","17":"tag-penn-medicine","18":"tag-pennsylvania","19":"tag-philadelphia","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115285882795136387","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}