Penn's renowned cancer scientist Carl June has received prestigious awards, including the inaugural Broermann Medical Innovation Award and the 2025 Balzan Prize, for his groundbreaking work in CAR-T cell therapy, recognizing his decades of research and clinical success.

His lab employs advanced genetic editing tools like CRISPR to identify new targets and prevent CAR-T cell exhaustion, aiming to enhance their effectiveness, especially in solid tumors.

June's award-winning work, shared with Michel Sadelain, focuses on developing CAR-T cells that target specific proteins on cancer cells, significantly advancing immunotherapy for blood cancers.

His research has contributed to improving T-cell manufacturing techniques, including methods to grow patients' own T-cells, addressing the challenge of universal donor availability.

June's studies at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center demonstrated the potent ability of T-cells to cure leukemia but also revealed risks like severe toxicity from donor T-cells, highlighting both the promise and challenges of CAR-T therapies.

Recent innovations from June’s lab include engineering CAR-T cells to secrete interleukin 18 (IL-18), which significantly boosts their potency and immune activation, showing promising results in lymphoma trials.

June emphasizes that translating preclinical findings into human trials remains slow, but rapid advances in related areas such as natural killer cells and in vivo delivery methods are accelerating progress.

Studies from Germany indicate that CAR-T therapies are showing promising responses in autoimmune diseases like lupus and scleroderma, with some patients achieving remission after a single infusion.

June’s early fascination with chemistry and his service during the Vietnam War influenced his focus on cancer therapies, including bone marrow transplants, during medical school.

In collaboration with James Riley at BlueWhale Bio, June's work involves innovative techniques to grow T-cells by removing nuclei from leukemia cells, aiming to improve immunotherapy methods.

His lab continues to tackle challenges in solid tumor cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, where CAR-T cells tend to become exhausted within two weeks, unlike in blood cancers where they can remain active for years.

June’s startup, Capstan Therapeutics, which developed CAR-T treatments for autoimmune diseases, was acquired by AbbVie for $2.1 billion, underscoring the expanding applications of CAR-T technology beyond cancer.

Since joining Penn Medicine in 1999, June has collaborated extensively on T-cell therapies, focusing on cultivating patient-specific T-cells from sources like umbilical cord blood to improve treatment outcomes.