French-Canadian scientist Michel Sadelain won the Science Oscars in Los Angeles on Saturday for his research into genetically modified immune cells to fight cancer.
Genetic engineering, tech giants like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, and Jessica Chastain, Robert Downey Jr.
Their work has led to the development of a new type of therapy called CAR-T, which has shown remarkable efficacy against certain blood cancers.
“It’s an honor because … my scientific colleagues have been saying for a long time that it won’t work.”
Launched in 2010, the Breakthrough Prize honors “the world’s most brilliant minds” in fields such as life sciences, basic physics and mathematics, and considers itself Silicon Valley’s answer to the Nobel.
Sponsors named to the Oscars for Science include Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg.
Some will share the $3 million prize with American immunologist Carl June, who has led groundbreaking research in the field independently of the winner.
“However, the greatest joy is seeing patients who no longer have options and thanks to us, live thanks to CAR-T cells,” said Sadelain.
He studied medicine in Paris and then immunology in Canada before doing postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989.
-‘Living Medicine’ –
At the time, there was great interest in developing vaccines to teach the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells, just as it was taught to fight foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses.
After Sadelain moved to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he devised a way to use a crippled virus to genetically reprogram human T cells, thereby developing nail-like structures called antigen receptors that allow T-cells to target specific targets. . cancer cells.
In addition to recognizing cancer, this Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell, named Sadelain, is given genetic instructions to go into killing mode and multiply, creating an army inside the body to destroy the enemy.
Since Sadelain’s groundbreaking in June, only half of the CAR-T cell therapies have been approved in the US, and hundreds more trials are underway.
The patient’s own T cells are harvested, modified outside the body, and then put into the blood, known as “living medicine.”
Treatment has been effective against lymphoma, some leukemias and myeloma, serious and complex blood cancers. Some hope that research will allow “the use of this treatment in other cancers.”
One of the main challenges is to reduce the more than $500,000 in medical expenses – money that is generally paid by insurance.
About 20 other scientists were honored at the Breakthrough Awards in various categories on Saturday.
Some of the research presented includes effective drugs to treat the causes of cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs, and the most common genetic cause of Parkinson’s disease.
