Tall figure, discreet smile, Michel Sadelain slips out of the amphitheater of the Paris medical faculty. The French immunologist, who has been living in the United States for thirty years, offers to escape for a few moments from the conference devoted largely to his work to drink a coffee on Place de l’Odéon, in the neighborhood he frequented when he was student.
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World recognized for his discoveries on CAR-T cells, a revolutionary therapy to fight against blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma), the researcher discovered the subtleties of the immune system on the benches of Parisian university.
From his training in the Tenon and then Saint-Antoine hospitals, he retained a taste for medical research. “French culture and republican education are an integral part of my life as a man and a researcher,” he points out, while evoking his family from Poland and Ukraine “without a single Gallic ancestor.”
An intuition deemed “without future”
Armed with extreme scientific rigor and wild inventiveness, this fervent admirer of Descartes joined the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in the early 1990s. For nearly three decades, he worked on his big idea: transforming patient’s immune cells, T lymphocytes, as weapons of war against their own tumors.
“Cancer is not an external enemy, like viruses or bacteria. Our immune system therefore lacks effectiveness in fighting it. I was convinced that genetic “instruction” could be provided to T lymphocytes to enable them to better identify malignant cells and destroy them,” explains the geneticist. Most immunologists do not understand his approach; gene therapy scares oncologists. His intuition is therefore judged “preposterous” or “no future” by his peers.
The scientist builds a shell and continues on his way. “In addition to tenacity, Michel possesses a rare quality: elegance. In science, it is defined by simplicity. In his publications, the experimental path unfolds with demonstrations of incredible rigor and efficiency. It’s a pleasure to read,” enthuses Sebastian Amigorena, from the Institut Curie, who is collaborating with him to improve the duration of action of CAR-T in the body.
“Too subversive”
Until the beginning of the 2010s, the French researcher’s work aroused indifference or ridicule at international conferences. But in 2014, his vision became reality. A resounding trial demonstrates the therapeutic power of its CAR-T cells on patients suffering from a form of leukemia. Three years later, the American Medicines Agency officially authorized the treatment. Since then, it has already helped treat some 35,000 patients with blood cancer around the world.
Looking back, the scientist says he regrets nothing, apart, perhaps, from not having built his career in France: “My work was too subversive to have the slightest chance of being financed here. Even in the United States, finding money hasn’t always been easy. »
Without a spirit of revenge, the researcher today savors the tributes. In 2024 alone, he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize for the life sciences – the equivalent, in the United States, of the Oscars of science – and the no less prestigious Gairdner Prize, awarded by Canada. His name is even starting to be mentioned for inclusion on the list of Nobel Prize winners in medicine.
Scientific pair
But to salute the success of Michel Sadelain without mentioning the work of another Frenchwoman, Isabelle Rivière, would be to miss half the story. “They formed an exceptional scientific pair, before forming a couple in the city,” confides Sebastian Amigorena. The CAR-T cell manufacturing center, from which the first cancer treatments emerged, was his creation.
“All those who tried before Isabelle Rivière to manipulate lymphocytes to transform them into anti-cancer therapy failed. Michel developed the big ideas, it was she who implemented them,” confirms Justin Eyquem, one of the laboratory’s former students. Another Frenchman.
Arriving for a post-doctoral fellowship in New York in 2014, the young researcher then chose to join the University of Berkeley in California. There, he has just created a biotechnology company with the American Jennifer Doudna, 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery, in collaboration with the Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier, of the CRISPR-Cas9 genome manipulation tool. No doubt, the succession of French excellence in genetic engineering is assured.
