PHILADELPHIA – University of Pennsylvania cancer and HIV gene therapy pioneer
Carl June, MD, has been named as a member of the 2017 class of fellows of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy. The AACR Academy recognizes and honors distinguished scientists whose major contributions have propelled significant innovation and progress against cancer. June, the director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapy in the Abramson Cancer Center and the director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn, was recognized for designing chimeric antigen receptor T cell immunotherapy for the treatment of refractory and relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
All fellows are nominated and elected in a peer-review process involving existing fellows of the AACR Academy and the AACR Executive Committee. Only those whose work has had a significant and enduring impact on the field are eligible.
June has published more than 350 manuscripts and has received numerous prizes and honors, including election of the Institute of Medicine in 2012, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, the William b. Coley award, the Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award from the AARB, the Richard V. Smalley Memorial Award from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the Philadelphia Award, the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence, and the Novartis Immunology Award for Cancer Cell Therapy Development. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.
June is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, as well as Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He received graduate training in Immunology and Malaria at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and post-doctoral training in transplantation biology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The AACR will formally induct June and the other fellows during its annual meeting in Washington D.C., which will be held April 1-5.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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